


Living With Ghosts

by jjtaylor



Series: Ghost Frank [2]
Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Breathplay, Ghosts, Knifeplay, M/M, Supernatural Elements, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:51:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjtaylor/pseuds/jjtaylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Listen, can we talk home renovation later?" Frank says, "I want to know why the kitchen floor has a secret layer of hand-carved occult symbols."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living With Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ataratah for beta. This story was originally posted on October 4th, 2009.

When Gerard opens his eyes, he's looking up at the ceiling, Mikey's knees and Frank's chin. He still feels like something is facing the wrong way when he sits up.

"Gerard, Gerard," Mikey's saying and Gerard has to kind of shoo him off because Mikey might think he's checking for vitals or something but he's really only tickling Gerard and making him feel fidgety and paranoid.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Gerard says as many times as Mikey is saying his name, and he tries to stand up but kind of sways and ends up leaning against Frank, which feels more intimate than he wants to be in front of everyone, especially considering Frank can actually touch Gerard now and that's still pretty new. It's then that he notices they are all resolutely not looking at Frank.

"What happened?" he says, and no one answers him. Mikey manages to get his fingers around Gerard's wrist and starts counting, like he even knows what he's supposed to be counting to.

Gerard looks at Frank, who's brushing Gerard's hair away from his forehead but stops the moment he notices Gerard is looking at him. Frank's expression is a tender, familiar sort of hello, and Gerard thinks its strange that he can feel something like familiarity, when in fact he hasn't seen Frank for more than a couple of hours. He wonders if that's why everyone is looking at him like this, because they're trying not to look at Frank and think too much about how he got here.

It's then that Gerard sees the silver dagger, the hilt just sticking out of Bob's bag. Pete's eyes are on Mikey only, Schechter's on Bob, waiting for a cue. Ray looks at Gerard, still crouched on the floor, and then looks at his hands.

Mikey insists on getting Gerard a glass of water, like it's some sort of vital medicine he's been skipping. Bob decides it's a good time to ask Frank personal questions about his body like he's giving him a physical.

"So what happened?" Gerard says, because no one else is volunteering the information, which makes Gerard suspicious. "Was I out for a long time?" Everyone kind of get shifty, even Frank and Bob at the other end of the room both look over.

"You weren't....out," Mikey says.

"But you weren't back for a while, either," Ray says.

Gerard finally shrugs off Mikey's offers of water, excuses himself to go hide in the bathroom, where he lets the water run and just leans over the sink. Frank is here. It worked. He's feeling better by the minute, which makes him think whatever happened with Bob's spell casting, he's probably just exhausted.

Everyone seems a little more relaxed when he comes back out, wiping his hands on his jeans. Ray's measuring the molding around the door, Mikey and Pete are in the living room sitting on the floor, Frank is submitting to Bob inspecting the burn on his hand, and running a piece of equipment that looks like it belongs inside a toaster up and down Frank's arm.

Gerard finds Schechter picking through a pile of books in one of Bob's trunks.

"You ok?" Schechter says when he sees Gerard has come over.

"I'm fine," Gerard says without really thinking it over. "Listen, I just wanted–" he stops, because it's awkward and he thinks he's the one making it that way, and it's even harder when Schechter looks up from the book in his hands, his eyes bright and clear and focused on Gerard. "Thanks for helping," he says weakly.

Schechter gives him one of those half-smiles and shrugs.

"I just didn't realize this stuff you did was real," Gerard says and then backpedals fast because he didn't mean it to sound like that. "I mean, I didn't really know anything about it, besides what Mikey said, and I know you were good at it, but we never really talked after," Gerard kind of trails off. It shouldn't be so hard to talk to Schechter now, it really shouldn't.

"We never really talked much before," Schechter says, and Gerard can't help but remember, and feel the burn in his cheeks at the sly way Schechter says it. He remembers. "Anyway, I'm glad I can help, for whatever its worth," Schechter adds, his tone all perfectly normal.

"It's worth a lot," Gerard says, and Schechter smiles at him, and Gerard can't get over the difference, the clear-eyed smile he remembers when he picked Brian up from rehab, the first time he'd really seen Brian, shining right there in front of him. And here it was again.

"I figure I owe you," Schechter says. Gerard's tried to tell him a hundred times that it's not true, or that he owes Schechter as much in return. It's hard to know one thing, one so personal thing about someone and realize you don't know anything else. And then, as though making sure they're on the same page, Schechter asks, "Were you upset when Mikey called me over?"

"No, you're friends," Gerard says, because it's true, he wasn't upset. Nervous, maybe, a little, it had been so long since he'd even seen Schechter.

"We're friends," Schechter says, "Or we could be."

"Yeah," Gerard agrees. "Yeah." Then Gerard's eyes are caught by Bob doing something that looks very much like measuring Frank's arm and he makes his way, slowly and not entirely subtly, back over to Frank.

  
When Frank first moved into the apartment, leaving behind four roommates in a pigpen with a communal couch and a milk crate table, he'd realized there was something to be said for living alone. He'd run into Ray at the supermarket, who told him he'd just finished renovating the place and was considering renting it, but since he lived in the unit right next door, he didn't want someone he didn't know.

"I cough a lot," Frank had said.

"Quit smoking," was Ray's advice, but he'd added, "I remember you as a kid, coughing like that. Always thought you'd grow out of it."

"Me too," Frank had said.

His coughing got worse, but the quiet of Ray's apartment – his apartment – made everything better, and sometimes Frank would stay inside, not wanting to see anyone, and preferring, when he had gone out, to come back to the stillness of the house, the door closing behind him.

The house felt like that again just before Gerard collapsed, like he was alone in the house, like time was moving in slow motion before he was able to awkwardly catch Gerard's slumping body.

He was hoping, as Bob pulled him aside, that he might have answers, maybe ones he didn't want to say in front of everyone else, but Bob only had questions, about Frank's illness before his death, his general health history, and various repetitions of the same questions while Bob ran what he would only say was a "reader" over various parts of Frank's body, and he gave a near clinical assessment of the burn, like he'd seen lots of skin burned by holy water before, which, Frank thought, might actually be a fair assumption.

Frank watches Gerard and Schechter talk while Bob studies him, and he doesn't have a name for the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach until Bob says something to him.

"They used to date, you know," Bob says, glancing over to where Frank's been looking.

"Oh?" Frank says, and rubs his hand over his stomach, trying to make the feeling disappear.

"Heard Schechter mention him, you know, the way you do."

"With an ex?" Frank says, finishing the sentence, now watching the way Gerard and Schechter seemed to be standing, reading the way they smiled.

Bob shrugs in a way that Frank means that's not what he was going to say, but he's not about to correct him.

"Did you know Schechter, when they were together?" Frank doesn't mean to hesitate over the word. Being upset at idea of Gerard dating someone before they met is kind of ridiculous, but Bob shakes his head.

"Nah, it was before he got clean, which was when he started in this field. Not a place you want to be if you're compromised."

Frank is still watching Schechter and Gerard, who are smiling at each other and Frank is absolutely not jealous, he's not going to be that guy. "Yeah, apparently Gerard got clean first, and it took Schechter a while to get his shit together, but he did. But you know, kind of too intense a place to start a relationship, you know?"

Frank doesn't know. Frank didn't even know Gerard was ever not sober. He can feel Bob watching him, can feel Bob's eyes on him, waiting for a reaction. He's still looking at Schechter when Gerard comes over, trying to figure out what he's so afraid of.

"So?" Gerard says. Bob doesn't answer, scribbling something in his notebook.

"I don't know," Frank says. "I'm still some sort of unknown freak."

"Don't say that," Gerard says. "You're not anything weird, you're just," Gerard looks to Bob for the right word but Bob shakes his head quickly, not wanting to be asked. "You're just complicated," Gerard says, and Frank giggles.

Gerard stops and stares at him and Frank is instantly nervous that he's gone transparent or something. "That's the first time I've heard you laugh," Gerard says.

"Yeah?" he says, because it seems impossible that Gerard has never hear him laugh, as long as they've been together, but Frank has watched several months of Gerard's life without Gerard knowing, and Frank thinks, even when he was ghostly, he wasn't really ever laughing for Gerard to hear it.

"Can I have a few days off?" Frank hears Mikey ask Schechter.

"Yeah," Schechter says absently, having gone back to looking through Bob's books.

"Me too?" Pete asks, coming to stand beside Mikey, and Schechter just glares at him.

  
Frank looks down at his hand absently, which is still red, though the welts are actually fading.

Frank says without thinking, "Hey, look, my hand's getting better," and everyone jumps at his exclamation and Bob's frown deepens. "That's, uh, that's better, isn't it?" Frank holds out his hand for Bob to examine, and Gerard kind of crawls all over Frank's arm, like he's making himself a barrier. Gerard eyes Bob warily, but Bob just kind of squints at Frank's hand and takes a step back.

"Maybe it was a fluke?" Mikey says, hesitantly.

"Yeah, maybe it was some leftover spiritual energy or something, like some sort of residue, from.....what happened," Gerard trails off, because, well, no one really knows what happened.

"It's possible," Bob says, and Schechter makes a kind of grunt but stops short of disagreeing with Bob.

"We could try it again," Pete says in a loud, falsely-cheery voice.

"Listen, who are you?" Ray says.

"It might not prove anything, especially if he's some sort of demon that can adjust to the holy water -" Schechter offers.

"What?" Gerard protests loudly, as Pete is trying to charm Ray.

"I'm just Mikey's friend, and you guys were the ones with the dagger when I came in here-"

"Broke in here," Gerard adds. "And Frankie's not a demon, so there's no need to get out the holy water."

"No, let's do it," Frank says, and everyone shuts up. He wishes they would stop doing that, because he hasn't really spoken for months now and it's weird enough for him without everyone staring at him anytime he says anything.

"No," Gerard says, tugging on Frank's arm and Frank looks right into Gerard's eyes, feels his heart start to pound. Gerard is right there, he's looking at Frank and Frank knows those lines around Gerard's mouth, he knows that concerned-stubborn look, because he's seen Gerard use it on Mikey.

"It's fine," Frank says. "And if it burns me again it'll just heal, like this did," Frank says, showing his now almost completely healed hand. It's just red, in a few thin lines, like the sleep wrinkles from having your hand under your pillow.

Gerard doesn't say anything, just looks at Frank for a minute longer, and then nods. Bob sees Gerard's gesture, and when he steps forward with the small silver bottle of holy water, Frank can feel Gerard's fingers tighten on his arm. Frank holds out his hand and everyone takes a step forward, to watch, Frank thinks, to see what's going to happen. His eyes are on Bob the whole time, and Frank can't help but trust Bob, because he hasn't tried to hurt him, and he doesn't seem entirely sure about this either. Frank thinks if Bob really wanted to hurt him, even in a room full of people who could fight back, all he'd have to do is toss the bottle of holy water at Frank's face, in his eyes or something, and Frank would be down on the floor. But Bob is carefully uncapping the bottle and holding it, ready, over Frank's open palm.

"Ok?" Bob asks, waiting for Frank's answer.

"Ok." Frank says, and then he watches as the holy water falls into his hand. It burns him the very second it touches his skin, and Frank yowls, shaking his hand hard, trying to wipe it on his jeans even though it's all dry, all the water's gone, burned away against the heat of Frank's skin. "Jesus Christ, motherfucker," Frank says, and Bob is capping the bottle, tucking it away in his pocket. "Fuck," Frank says for good measure, and when the water from his eyes has cleared, he sees that everyone's looking away, except for Gerard, who has come over, taken Frank's hand in his and is examining the burn.

"So that told us absolutely nothing," Bob says after it's been quiet for too long.

"It means I'm still not human," Frank says, like it's something impossible to believe. Gerard tugs at his arm, scolding him for saying such a thing.

"Nothing new," Bob says, and it's the end of the discussion.

  
Gerard feels sturdier by the moment and is not sure he really believes that he passed out in the first place, and Ray, who seems to draw strength from home repair, is running his stud-finder across the walls around the front door. Mikey and Pete are discussing going somewhere that Pete calls the magic shop with a toothy grin which makes Bob wince. Schechter keeps taking smoke breaks outside like they aren't allowed to smoke inside, and Bob's surrounded by books, reading over indexes and flipping pages with an intense look on his face that warns everyone away. Gerard has a lot of questions, and Bob, though he's just so recently declared he's at a loss, seems the closest to having answers.

"Look, you're all welcome to stay," Gerard says, because he feels like someone has to set some rules, "but this is my apartment, and I'm not going to have any of you chasing Frank around in it." Bob doesn't look up, but Gerard can tell he's heard him.

There's a long pause and then Ray says, "And this is my house, and no one's getting murdered. I signed on for a séance, not a bloodbath." Gerard could hug Ray, and he would, if he didn't think running at someone with his arms open might send the wrong message while everyone's this on edge.

"I'd leave you all alone if I could," Bob says, finally acknowledging that he's a part of the conversation, "but I'm involved now, I helped make this happen." Gerard can fill in the rest, that Bob is admitting he's involved if there are consequences.

"But what could he really do?" Pete says, and Mikey shushes him again. "Ghosts aren't that bad. Spirits and demons and stuff, they can't be that bad or they'd be tearing the world apart, right?"

"They are," Bob says quietly, "Just very slowly, piece by piece." Pete's eyes widen. "You don't want me to give you a list of all of the things I think Frank here could do if he were any of the spirits, demons, or hybrids I've encountered. The fact that Frank seems to be none of these makes it more likely that he's more dangerous, not less."

"You're just guessing - "Gerard says.

Bob's shouts stop him before he finishes the sentence. "Yes, I'm guessing, and that's the best I can do right now. And I would walk away, trust me, I would, I know when I'm not welcome, and I know when I've made a mistake, but if any of you get hurt because of what I did - " Bob stops and composes himself. "There's a lot of work ahead of us. First, we need to decide who's going to stay and who's out of this, because there's really no good time to leave, but if there was, this is it. And I don't mean leave the house, I know some of you have bills to pay. I mean, if you want out of the situation, then this is it." No one makes a gesture of agreement. "Even you?" Bob says, eyeing Pete.

"Yeah, man, no, I'm totally in," Pete says. Mikey, whose expression remains tightly closed off, tilts his head and Pete comes back over and they do their silent communication thing again, which annoys Gerard more than he wants to admit.

"Ok, then," Bob says. "Frankie and I need to have a heart to heart in private. No knives," he says specifically to Gerard, and Frank has to say that it's ok a dozen times before Gerard will let go of his hand, and even then he's not so sure about it. Frank presses an impromptu kiss to Gerard's cheek, startling them both.

  
Frank follows Bob into the living room, and Bob waves Schechter off, glares at Pete until he takes Mikey, and then finally Bob and Frank are alone. Frank thinks perhaps Bob might be lying about the no knives thing, because he's pulling something out of his pocket, and Frank is surprised at how relieved he feels, that this will all be over now, that whatever is going to happen is going to happen in mere seconds, and Frank can finally just know how it's all going to end.

What Bob pulls out from inside his jacket is silver and glinting but it's not a knife. It's a mirror. "Here," he says, and gives it to Frank. Frank hesitates, and then takes it and holds it up to his face. And sees nothing.

"What the fuck?" he asks Bob. "What the hell is this?"

Bob doesn't say anything, just holds the mirror up to his own face, and then turns and holds it up for Frank. Frank still doesn't see anything. Well, it's not true, he' sees the reflection of the room behind him, distorted and facing disorientingly the wrong way. He reaches for Bob's hand and positions the mirror where it should be reflecting Frank, but it doesn't, no matter what way he turns it. "What the hell, is this some magic mirror?" Frank demands angrily.

"No, just a normal one," Bob says evenly. He looks at his own reflection. "Come on, stand behind me. See, I'm in the mirror." he says when Frank stands behind him. "But you're not."

"So what the fuck does that mean?" Frank's furious and frustrated and confused, trying to piece all of this together, everything he's ever heard about mirrors and vampires with no reflections.

"Something went wrong with the séance. With the mirror ritual."

"The mirror ritual?" Frank says, because hearing it said like that - he thought this was - "You've done this before?"

"People have done it before," Bob says. "In cases of split-spirit hauntings." Before Frank can ask what the hell a split-spirit haunting is and when the hell mirrors became apparently so powerful, Bob says, "Which is the closest thing to what's happening with you. Or so I thought."

Frank just stares and Bob continues, but slowly, as if admitting his mistake is actually physically painful. "Sometimes, when people die, a part of them wants to hang on and a part of them wants to move on. That's how you get a split-spirit haunting. Two parts of one person, tugging at each other. Light and dark, positive and negative, whatever two opposite parts of a person are most powerful. For you, it was caring for people and hurting them."

"I don't want to - "

"Shut up a minute, I'm talking about your shadow self. Your dark opposite."

Frank pulls a face and Bob laughs. "It's true, we all have one, and accepting it brings awareness and balance. We don't accept its actions, we accept that it's there. You care for people and you admit you're afraid of hurting them, but by being aware of it, you're much less likely to do it."

"Is that – is that what happened with the other spirit? The thing that was attacking Gerard? So the mirror was supposed to help me see my shadow self and accept it?"

"Yes," Bob says, "It was supposed to show you whatever you needed to see to move on. Except it was clear you weren't going to move on."

"So the reason I didn't move on and the reason I don't have some great insight into who I am is because -

"You were stuck for some other reason."

Frank considers this, and tries to figure out the best question to ask that isn't 'how do you know' or 'are you sure.' "So not having a reflection now is worse than being split?"

"Yeah," Bob says, "Yeah, it's worse because it might mean you're still split. That only a part of you is here."

Frank looks at his hands, as though expecting them to be see-through. "So there's me, there's my shadow, and there's some other part of me that has my reflection?"

Bob shakes his head. "You're not a puzzle we're putting back together. I'm more interested in why you got stuck. I feel like meeting your shadow self is not the answer. Still not a bad thing for you to pursue, though. Spend some time meditating. Focus your thoughts inward." It should have sounded ridiculous, but Bob looked perfectly serious.

Just as Bob's turning away, the mirror tucked back into the pocket inside his jacket, Frank asks, "So what's your shadow self, then? Cuddly and sweet?"

Bob's expression goes dark. "You're looking at it." Bob says, "I am the shadow. The other part of me is long gone."

  
Frank splashes water on his face in the bathroom, carefully avoiding the mirror. He wonders if Bob's going to tell everyone, how long he can keep it quiet. Just as he's toweling off, he realizes he can't actually see the towel in the mirror, either. It looks as though there's just no one in the bathroom. Frank hangs the towel back up and when he looks in the mirror, he can see its reflection, hanging on the towel rack. But he can't see himself. It's weird, because he was thinking like he was invisible. Like he didn't exist.

When he comes back down, Pete and Mikey are gone, Schechter's smoking outside again, and Ray is measuring linoleum tile. He does not look for Bob.

Gerard keeps trying to get Frank to eat something, but Frank doesn't feel hungry at all and says so. This makes Bob make a kind of displeased huff, and so Frank agrees to let Gerard make him a fried egg and bologna. Ray has gone to get a screw extractor to fix a broken screw head he found while systematically inspecting all of the hinges in the kitchen. Meanwhile Bob seems to be examining every single page of the twelve books he had in his car.

Gerard kept insisting that passing out was nothing other than some mystic-level tiredness and refuting Bob's claims that there was now something fishy with both Frank and Gerard. Gerard had dealt with Bob's protests by making a grocery list for all of his guests as though he were some sort of skilled host, which Frank was certain was not the case. Gerard, however, insisted on polling people about their favorite bread and snack choices, taking meticulous notes. Mikey and Pete were tucked away in a corner of the living room where it looked like Mikey was trying to explain the whole story and Pete was trying to stick his fingers as far into Mikey's back pockets as possible under the guise of listening raptly.

Frank just sits in kitchen chair, thinking about how he's actually breathing now and he'd apparently spent months just thinking he was breathing. He wondered if he had actually been breathing just at some lower, unreadable rate, or if he had just had breathing turned off, like his body was in stasis or something. He asks Bob about it without meaning to, while Gerard is listing all of the various different lettuce options.

"Is this really my body?" Frank says and Gerard's fingers freeze while just as he's imitating the exact leafy quality of romaine.

Bob stares at him, his eyes narrowed. "Does it feel like it belongs to someone else?"

"No, it feels like mine, but I felt like I had a body when I was.....before, so it's kind of hard to tell, whether it was mine all along and it was just turned off?" Frank trails off without meaning it to be a question.

"Hmmm," Bob says, and Frank sighs.

"Was I really a ghost?" Frank says, and Gerard takes a step forward, rests his hand on Frank's shoulder. "Like, if we opened my coffin, would I still be in there?"

"That's a very good question," Bob says. "And from everything I've read today and everything I knew to be true before I met you, you did actually die, but what happened after that isn't really clear. Because, here's the thing with this house. Everything seems to be pointing to the fact that, if you died here, you'd be rocketed straight into the afterlife, no other choice, no other stops. So, how in the world you ended up stuck here if you did die only makes me think maybe you didn't actually die, not all the way?"

Gerard's eyes are wide. Frank doesn't want to say what he's thinking because he doesn't want Bob's answer, but he has to ask anyway. "So I could still die again, I mean, like, soon. What if whatever we did….is gonna run out?"

"It's possible," Bob says, and abruptly turns his head back to his book.

  
"I thought I'd redo the kitchen," Ray says, to Gerard, who is momentarily distracted by Frank shifting in his chair. "Been meaning to do it for a few years now, and if I'm going to be spending a bunch of time here, I might as well make the place look good."

Gerard likes that Ray is coping by doing something with the house. It makes Gerard feel less like everything he's done since move in here is to upset Ray's life, and Ray seems more settled, more calm when he's redoing something, and the calm extends to Gerard as he watches Ray compare a new piece of a linoleum to the existing floor, tilting his head like he's trying to get the light right.

"Gerard," Bob says and Gerard startles. There's nothing calm about that voice, even if Bob sounds perfectly normal. "Come here for a minute?" Gerard catches Frank's hand as he goes and squeezes his fingers around Frank's.

Bob hands Gerard a list when he comes over, which is different than what Gerard's expecting. He thinks maybe Bob was going to run his equipment over him, or hold out the grimoire, but instead Bob's got his sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead and he hands Gerard a torn piece of notebook paper with a few handwritten lines. Gerard looks at it, and then up at Bob.

"It's a list of things you want to watch out for in the house, especially when I'm not here," Bob says. "Put it on the fridge or something. Tape it to the bathroom mirror."

Gerard scans down the list and reads, "Shadows where there's no light source? Seeing double?" Bob doesn't react. Gerard wonders whether Bob has seen all of these things, more that once. "And what do I do if I see these things."

"Call me," Bob says. "If there's even something you're not sure about, just tell me about it, ok?" Bob says, suddenly very intense. "It's always easier to do something early than late." Bob drops his sunglasses back over his eyes and turns away, and Gerard wanders back over to Frank, tucking the list into his back pocket and vowing to read it more closely later.

  
The thing Frank most wants to know is whether or not he's actually here. That's a hard enough one to answer, because – he felt like he was _here_ when he was a ghost. He's not sure he has the right frame of reference any longer. And it's clear everyone else isn't really sure either – they can see him, they can talk to him, which is something, really, considering before, but Frank feels like everyone is trying their best to look anywhere other than directly at him, like they might be burned or see right through him. Except Gerard, who makes Frank feel at ease just looking at him. It's a relief when Frank gets up and goes into the kitchen, away from everyone's curious gazes, and Gerard follows, hugging Frank quickly from behind. Frank immediately turns around in Gerard's embrace.

Frank wants to touch every part of Gerard with his mouth. He feels like he hasn't used his mouth in years, feels like all of his energy is gathering there and he can't help but press his mouth to Gerard's collarbone, the collar of Gerard's t-shirt catching on his bottom lip. Gerard makes an unguarded, needy noise and then tenses, and Frank can tell Gerard didn't mean to make that sound at all, but the sound just spurs Frank on and he reaches up to pull back the material and presses his lips to Gerard's skin. The noise Gerard makes this time is more controlled, but still encouraging and so Frank presses his teeth to Gerard's collarbone, scraping the skin, and Gerard gasps and throws his head back, so Frank does it again, and again, all across Gerard's collarbone, Gerard's hands pressing lightly and slightly lost against Frank's like, like Gerard's not sure he's really allowed to pull Frank closer. When Frank licks up Gerard's neck, Gerard's hands fly to Frank's chin and Gerard guides Frank's mouth to his. They kiss slowly and deeply, and for so long that Frank forgets everything but the feel of Gerard's mouth and his hands in Gerard's hair.

Gerard breaks away, pressing a few sloppy kisses to the side of Frank's mouth. "Do you want to," Gerard stops. "Do you want, uh, go upstairs?" Gerard's eyes are bright and his lips are swollen and red. Frank wants to lean forward and kiss him hard and deep again, but he also wants to go upstairs, where Bob won't come wandering back in through the door, where he can take Gerard's clothes off, and suck Gerard, and remember how to use his mouth.

"Yeah," Frank says, and runs his hand over Gerard's shoulder, across his chest, sitting at his belly, just above his waist. Gerard shivers. When they go up the stairs, no one is anywhere around to see them, no one to have to explain anything to at all.

Time seems to move so slowly, and Frank is so focused on Gerard, on how it feels when he touches him, on how it feels to be right next to him, how their bodies fit together. It feels like hours that they're kissing, fucking, gasping against each other and Frank doesn't fall asleep, just closes his eyes with his head against Gerard's warm chest, listening to him breathing, feeling himself breathe, full of wonder.

  
Frank has not really had a real conversation with Pete, possibly because Gerard is acting like his bodyguard and Pete is on alert whenever Gerard is in the room, whether or not he's surreptitiously pulling away from Mikey's entwined fingers. Frank gets the sense, though, that no one really wants to be alone with Frank anyway, even for just a few minutes, except for Bob and they both know the reason for that. Frank was worried that some sort of mystical deal had been brokered, some sort of trade, where Frank had been let out of the trap of the house in exchange for something else.

Frank keeps reaching out for Gerard to make sure he's still solid, like it is only a matter of time before he starts to fade.

And Frank wonders, and keeps trying to figure out how to ask Bob about this without Gerard overhearing, and has to settle for asking Pete – whether or not Frank and Gerard had absorbed something from the house, or whether Gerard had a part of Frank's split spirit form inside of him.

"That's strange, dude," Pete says, "The whole split spirit form in the first place, I mean. But it makes sense that not all the spilled milk goes back into the same jug. I mean, let's be real here, what do you feel? Do you feel like you, like, traded Gerard for freedom?"

Before Frank can answer, Bob comes in, Ray just behind him. Pete seems to understand Frank doesn't want to finish the conversation with Bob around, and so he takes off with a, "Later, man," and goes off, presumably to find Mikey.

When Frank looks up, Bob is just staring at him, and then he abruptly turns and goes back outside, and Frank, feeling a little like Pete, goes off to see what Gerard is doing in the long ten minutes since he's seen him.

  
There's a haunting Bob gets word of and there are kids involved and so he takes off, saying he'll either be back in a few hours or a few days. Pete tries to ask if he can go with Bob and Bob just stares at him until he backs down.

Pete sits down with a huff on the floor next to the armchair where Frank's sitting, Gerard's armchair. Pete crosses his legs, his half-tied sneakers tucked under his knees, his hood up over his head. "That kid takes longer to get ready than a girl," Pete says, and Frank laughs, because he's seen Mikey with the straight iron.

"So, you're what, Gerard's boyfriend?" Pete asks. Frank doesn't really know how to answer, and so he sort of nods, and Pete keeps talking. "And you guys were dating while you were a ghost? Did he move here to be with you?"

"No," Frank says quickly. "No, it's not like that, it's not - " He can't seem to get past what it's not and so he tries another approach. "This was my place. And I died here. And then Gerard moved in."

"Yeah," Pete says, like that's what he meant the whole time. "That's pretty awesome that he wanted to be with you even after you were a ghost. Is that why you became a ghost, to stay with him? Was it, like, true love from beyond the fucking grave?"

"Uh," Frank says, because he's really, really uncomfortable now.

"That's awesome, man. And don't worry about," Pete says, gesturing vaguely at Frank's body. "If love brought you back, it's not going to make a lot of logical sense, especially to these ghost hunter guys. Love isn't like that. Sometimes I think love is like a demon," Pete says and then Mikey is coming down the stairs and all of Pete's attention is on him. "Mikeyway, Mikeyway, are you ready?" He sounds ecstatic.

"Gerard wanted to talk," Mikey says, and Frank thinks for a minute that Mikey's making an excuse for spending so long with the flat iron, and, when Frank looks up into his face, apparently the eyeliner. But then he realizes that Mikey is looking at Frank.

"He wanted to talk to me?" Frank stumbles. Mikey rolls his eyes and heads for the front door.

Pete turns back to Frank and says, "It's like a demon, man, for real," and then Pete follows Mikey outside.

Upstairs, Gerard is sitting on his bed with a pencil poised over a messy, smudged piece of paper.

"Hi," Frank says nervously, leaning in the doorway. Frank spent a lot of time hanging out and watching Gerard but he was never actually visible, and so it's a lot harder to feel at ease now when he's aware that although this is familiar to him, it's not familiar to Gerard at all and the truth is Frank has kind of forgotten how to act normally.

"Hi," Gerard says happily, his pencil still hovering over but not touching the paper.

"Mikey said you wanted to talk?"

Gerard looks horrified for a second. "He did?" Things seem to resolve themselves on Gerard's face and he looks embarrassed. "Oh, uh," Gerard says, figuring things out. "I was having trouble drawing you, and I thought maybe it would be easier if you were here. I used to not have any trouble at all, but – I mean, I know you're just downstairs, but it's like you're far enough away that I can't remember some of the details and - " Gerard flushes.

"I used to follow you around," Frank says. "When I was – before. I used to always follow you around, so you were sitting here and drawing, I would have stayed at the door like this, or sat down or something."

"Really?" Gerard looks cheered by this rather than alarmed as Frank had feared, since he was basically admitting how he'd been stalking Gerard without Gerard knowing.

"Yeah," Frank says. "I, uh, I didn't like to not be near you. It's like I had to be, like I didn't have a choice." It's the closest he's gotten to explaining how he'd been acting when he was a ghost and haunting Gerard's every step.

"It's just," Gerard says, "It always felt like you were around all the time, and I thought maybe I'd imagined it, because now when you're not right here, I notice it. But that's because you used to be here all the time, and now it's just - "

"Now it seems like I'm not supposed to, you know?"

Gerard smiles at him and Frank feels himself flush. "Come sit down."

Frank sits on the bed, but ends up lying on his stomach so that he can still watch Gerard draw without getting a crick in his neck. Sometimes when Gerard shifts, his elbow brushes Frank's arm, and Frank tries not to lean into the touch, because this is just - this is just them hanging out. This isn't true fucking love from beyond the grave.

Gerard goes back to drawing, growing quiet with his concentration. Frank picks up a pencil, an eraser, and finally the straight razor in Gerard's art box. Frank plays with the razor, sharpening a pencil into a perfect point and pressing the point into the pad of his thumb. Gerard is sketching with charcoal, blurring lines with his fingers, almost in a rhythm. Frank watches him, watches his hands, starts to feel something in his chest heating up, like your fingers feel when you try to change a light bulb that's still on, and he wants to put Gerard's fingers in his mouth. He puts the straight razor, instead, brushing the flat end of the knife across his lips, and then tapping the sharp end against his teeth. He's about to touch the blade with his tongue, see if it tastes like pencil, like charcoal, like Gerard's fingers must taste, when he looks up and sees Gerard is looking at him, the sound of his drawing stopped. Frank touches his tongue to the blade with Gerard looking and Gerard's pupils go wide and dark, his own mouth falling open. Frank lets his tongue go all the way up the blade, up over the very tip, pressing down until it's almost too sharp. Gerard sets down his notebook on the arm of the chair, runs his hands through his hair, his eyes on Frank's mouth, and the knife. Frank closes his teeth along the blade, and then draws it down over his bottom lip, down across the skin of his chin. Gerard reaches for Frank but stops short of actually touching him.

Frank stands up, walks over, and Gerard can't seem to decide whether he wants to watch Frank's mouth of his hand where the straight razor is. Frank dances his fingers along the razor, licks his bottom lip, and Gerard just looks more confused, back and forth, eyes darting from his hands to his mouth. Frank sits down on the floor, his hands on Gerard's knees for a moment, the razor pressing against his jeans for just a second. Frank settles himself, so he's sitting, almost cross-legged, one leg close against Gerard's ankles. Gerard's breathing fast now, and Frank can feel the warmth in his chest spreading through his whole body, radiating out to every place he's touching Gerard. He reaches out for Gerard's hand, his fingers brushing just the inside of Gerard's thigh, right along the seam. He holds Gerard's hand in his, turns it over, so his palm is facing up, and lifts the razor with his other hand.

"Frank," Gerard says breathlessly, just before Frank lowers the tip of the blade to the middle of Gerard's palm. Gerard gasps when the blade touches his skin, very lightly, not even enough to make a mark. Frank looks up at him, and Gerard blinks fast, five times in a row, and he drags the razor down toward his knuckle, toward the first wrinkle of skin at his index finger. Gerard sucks in a breath, bites his bottom lip, and his hand jerks. Frank tightens his grip, holds Gerard's hand still, brings the razor all the way down to the pad of his index finger, pressing harder, so there's a line, and then a suddenly, a tiny blossom of blood. Frank lifts the blade, looks at it, looks at Gerard, who looks both confused and insanely turned on. Frank starts the razor at Gerard's middle finger, drawing it down toward his palm. Gerard whimpers. Frank presses harder when he gets to the middle of Gerard's palm, raising a red line that's not quite bleeding, and then presses the blade into the heel of Gerard's palm, so there's a line of red blood.

"Jesus, Frankie," Gerard whispers, and his hand twitches, and Frank just holds his hand tighter, draws the razor all the way down against the outside edge of his palm. "Please, Frankie, please," and Frank brings the knife all the way down to Gerard's pinkie finger, and stops, pressing incrementally harder.

"Do you want me to stop?" Frank says in a voice he barely recognizes.

"I don't know, Frankie, I don't know, I want – " Gerard says his hand pulling away, Frank holding tight. Frank presses the razor down, dragging it back down Gerard's pinkie, turning his hand over so the razor makes a circle over the back of Gerard's hand.

Gerard is starting to tremble. Frank abruptly drops the razor into the floor and pulls Gerard toward him, Frank's hands in Gerard's shirt, his mouth on Gerard's jaw and then his teeth on Gerard's bottom lip.

"Fuck," Gerard groans and then they're kissing, Frank's chest against Gerard's knees. He feels like maybe the whole thing was a little too wrong and it shouldn't have turned him on so much, make him want this so much. "Don't stop."

Frank thinks there's something a little wrong in the way Gerard says it, but he's too caught up in Gerard's reactions, in his own impulse to pull open Gerard's pants, which he does, and the noise Gerard makes does even more to erase Frank's doubts that perhaps Gerard doesn't really want to do this, and then it's too late to stop, Frank's mouth on Gerard's cock and Gerard's hand in Frank's hair and when Gerard comes, Frank notices that Gerard's holding the straight razor so tightly in his other hand, he's cut a thin line into his palm.

  
Mikey's making toast and Frank is sitting with his feet up on the chair when Gerard comes down, and slams his coffee cup so hard that coffee sloshes out onto the counter. Frank is instantly worried this has to do with what happened last night. He can still see the very edge of the cut along the inside of Gerard's hand. Gerard looks for a moment like he's going to clean up the spilled coffee and then he grabs Mikey's arm and twists him around. Mikey's toast pops up and Mikey turns to get it but Gerard's grip on his arm stops him.

"What the fuck," Mikey says, trying to twist away, but Gerard's fingers are too tight on him, Frank can see how white Gerard's fingers are, how red Mikey's arm is turning.

"Don't," Gerard hisses.

Frank is frozen, at a loss for what to do. He wants to say something but his words won't come together.

"Let me go," Mikey says and finally wrenches away. He steps back and stares open-mouthed at Gerard, rubbing his fingers over the spot where Gerard held him tight.

"Don't go out with Wentz again," Gerard says, and then grabs a towel and wipes up the spilled coffee almost as an afterthought.

"What's the matter with you?" Mikey shouts, but when Gerard doesn't even look up at him, Mikey grabs his toast and storms off.

"Christ," Gerard says, deflating, his forehead almost pressed down to the counter.

"What was that?" Frank asks cautiously. He finally feels like he can stand up, so he takes over mopping up the spilled coffee. Gerard abruptly moves away, standing in front of the sink, like he's either about to be sick or dunk his head under the faucet.

"I don't know," Gerard says, sounding distraught. "I was just so angry."

"Yeah," Frank says. "That was kind of obvious."

"I mean, Mikey pisses me off a lot, that's what little brothers are made for. There's just something about Wentz." Gerard's face goes all twisted and dangerous when he says Pete's name.

"It's ok, man, I understand," Frank says, though he's a little worried that in a second Gerard's going to grab his arm tight the way he had with Mikey. But Gerard just stands there, looking furious and doing nothing. "Come on, let's go for a walk."

"Ok," Gerard says and then, abruptly, "No! You can't go outside, Frankie."

Despite the harshness of the declaration, Frank can tell Gerard means it out of concern. "It's just a walk around the neighborhood. Nothing's going to happen."

"How can you know that?" Gerard asks. "Look at all the weird shit that happens inside this house."

"I've been here too long, that's what I'm saying," Frank says. "It's all starting to feel normal."

Frank convinces Gerard to sit out on the porch to smoke and have their coffee, but Gerard is alert like Frank's a dog off his leash who could bolt at any minute, and so it's not really the refreshing trip outside that Frank had been looking for. Still, the fresh air makes Frank feel a little more clear-headed and calm.

"I could go follow Pete and Mikey, when they go to the haunted house tonight," Frank says, but someone who isn't Gerard answers.

"That would be inadvisable," Bob says, walking past them to sit on the front steps, an EMF reader in his hands. He's apparently returned from whatever business had him out, and Frank wonders how long he's been at Ray's.

"Don't bring that out here, what are the neighbors going to think?" Ray says, just a step behind him.

Bob laughs. "No one walking by would know this wasn't a radio."

Ray sighs.

"So no going to follow Pete and my brother," Gerard says to Frank, "As much as I would appreciate them having a chaperone."

"You could get possessed," Bob warns, and Ray shudders while Frank gapes open-mouthed at Bob.

"I could what?" Frank says, but Bob doesn't answer. Frank finishes his cigarette, thinking maybe he should go follow Pete and Mikey, that maybe being possessed would be a lot better than Bob looking at him suspiciously, Ray pretending everything was fine and Gerard actually believing that.

Bob walks around the house like he's checking for cracks in the foundation for the rest of the afternoon, and Frank keeps watching his blond head appearing under the window on the side of the house as Bob completes another circuit. Frank wonders what the neighbors think, whether they too will come out and start circling their houses, like Bob knows something about an impending flood that they haven't yet heard about.

Schechter is reading like he always does whenever he comes over, and Frank wonders whether it's his imagination that whenever Schechter's eyes wander from the page, they wander to Gerard.

Schechter abruptly drops his book, the pages falling open. "Oh, this is - this is -" Schechter fumbles for his cigarettes, puts one in his mouth and lights it. "I need to talk to Bob," he says, and runs out the door.

Frank wants to know what Schecter's found, and he's annoyed that Schechter's gone to tell Bob first, but Bob makes four more laps before coming back in and so Frank figures it wasn't anything anyway. When Bob comes through the front door, Frank says, looking at the way the wind's whipping the trees around outside, "Looks like a storm's coming."

Bob frowns at him. "What are you, a fucking weatherman?"

"Did Schechter find you?" Gerard asks. Bob shakes his head. "Really? He ran out to tell you something maybe twenty minutes ago."

"Maybe he went out for cigarettes first," Bob says. "'Cause I haven't seen him."

"He was reading this," Frank says, picking up the book and handing it to Bob. Bob looks at the spine, rifles through a few pages, and is about to close it when he stops, turns back a page, and then marks it with a piece of paper he pulls from his pocket. "Don't turn down the corners on spooky books," Bob says, pointing the book at Frank. "Never know what you might be marking."

Bob turns and walks off. Frank sighs, and Gerard tilts his head, gesturing for Frank to come over. Gerard shifts in the chair, giving Frank room to perch on the arm.

"You know he's just trying to scare you," Gerard says. Frank shrugs. "He doesn't like that he doesn't know everything, and so he wants you to be the one on guard, to make it seem less like it has to be him."

Frank thinks Gerard's making a lot of sense, but it still doesn't help him feel less like he's Bob's target. And Frank's not sure Bob isn't right to keep an eye on him.

"Stop worrying," Gerard says. Frank's about to brush Gerard's hair back from his forehead when Gerard jerks forward, coughing.

"Jesus," Frank says. "Are you ok? Do you want some water?" Gerard is still hacking, but he shakes his head no, finally bringing his fit under control with some awful-sounding wheezes. "Are you feeling ok?" Frank asks. Gerard takes a bunch of deep breathes in a row, then starts coughing again.

Mikey comes in with a displeased expression on his face. "I can fucking hear you from the other room, are you dying?"

Gerard waves off both Mikey's hand trying to touch his forehead to check for a fever and Frank trying to ask if he needs to open his airways.

"Get the fuck away from me," Gerard says. "I'm fine, I just need a smoke."

Mikey rolls his eyes.

"Maybe you've caught a cold or something," Frank says. Gerard shakes his head again, sitting up and reaching for his cigarettes. "Hey, I used to get them all the time."

Bob gives Frank a look like maybe he thinks Frank is lying.

"You could barely stop coughing long enough to give me the rent the first month," Ray says, and looks worried that he's made some sort of inappropriate reference to Frank's death.

"Maybe you should go see a doctor," Frank says, feeling suddenly like Gerard's cough could lead to the kind of things that Frank got all the time, in which case, Gerard might actually get really sick.

"I'm fine," Gerard says sternly to everyone, and then more gently to Frank, "really."

"Maybe we should all get some rest," Bob says. No one argues.

  
Gerard doubles back before he follows Frank upstairs, telling Frank he left his cigarettes downstairs, but what he's going back for is to take Frank's obituary down from the refrigerator. He'd seen Frank looking at it before, and it didn't seem right to have it up anymore. It seemed like asking for trouble, so he takes it down, but he can't quite throw it out, so he folds it and puts it into his pocket. Before he goes back upstairs, he calls Schechter, but there's no answer. He doesn't leave a message, because Schechter's going to call him back in a few minutes, he knows it.

  
Schechter hasn't called the next morning, Mikey is looking cautiously at his phone, the same way Gerard's been all morning, as though there might be something wrong with it. Mikey puts his into his pocket and comes up to Gerard with that unmistakable air of a scolding younger brother. "So I'm going out with Pete," Mikey says.

"Ok," Gerard says, wondering if maybe his reaction to this is a test, but Mikey is still giving him the uncertain, appraising look.

"So I still haven't heard from Schechter."

"Couldn't his phone be dead or something?"

Mikey gives Gerard a scathing look. "What happened?"

"What do you mean, what happened?" He feels defensive before Mikey even actually asked the question, which should tell him something about how much he's already wondered whether it was something he did that chased Schechter away. Mikey just looks at him, and so Gerard says, to fill the uncomfortable silence, "If anything happened, I don't know about it, seriously, Mikey, we had a nice talk yesterday."

"You had a nice talk?" Mikey sounds both disgusted and skeptical.

"Yeah, we talked about how we – how we could be friends," Gerard says, feeling awkward and a little personal.

"And you didn't do anything with Frank in front of him?"

"No!" Gerard says instantly, though he's searching his memory, wondering if maybe he did. "What would I do with Frank that would upset Schechter so much he disappeared?"

Mikey just glares at Gerard. "I don't think the thing Schechter wanted from you was a nice talk, ok? I'm sure that was pretty hard for him."

Gerard feels like a total asshole. "I swear, Mikey, everything seemed ok."

"I love you, Gee, but you aren't always the best judge of things like that, ok?"

Mikey's phone rings and Gerard thinks it has to be Schechter, calling just at the right moment to see if everything's ok, but it's Pete. "Ok, I'll be right out," Mikey says. He turns one last scolding look at Gerard before he walks out.

Gerard gets out his sketchpad and when he sits down, he finds he doesn't even know what to draw. He wonders where Schechter's gone, if he did say something that he shouldn't have, if nothing he will do today will come out right.

  
Frank is making a sandwich, trying to see if he remembers how to do it, bread first, then mustard, then cheese – but he has to try so hard to do it all that it doesn't feel like any sort of accomplishment, just like he's doing something while practically asleep. Bob comes in to the kitchen, reaches in the refrigerator for a piece of equipment he's been keeping there next to the butter, and attaches it to a battery pack. Bob was suspicious of the outlets, which Ray took personally.

"It's not like I have a haunted coffee maker on my side or anything, the electricity is safe from the paranormal." Ray had complained.

"Hungry?" Bob says, looking at Frank's sandwich. Frank shrugs. Nothing he does seems right with Bob, not since they talked about the mirror.

"Did you say something to Schechter?" Bob says, like it's the logical next question, but there's something dangerous in his voice. "Because I noticed he's not around, and I know I told you about Schechter and Gerard…."

"We barely even spoke," Frank says. "Only when there were other people around."

"You're sure?" Bob says. He's standing, almost just behind Frank but not quite, like he's looking over Frank's shoulder to supervise the sandwich making. "I think that you got a little jealous," Bob says.

"No," Frank says. He presses his palms against the counter, does not look at Bob because he's afraid Bob will see it. Frank was jealous, but he didn't – he didn't do anything. He wouldn't say anything. Schechter helped get him out, he seems like a nice guy.

"No?" Bob says. "So you didn't scare him away? Tell him to back off? Threaten him?"

"No!" Frank says, and to his relief, Gerard appears at the door.

"Hey," Gerard says, a little nervousness in his voice, and Frank can't tell how much of the situation Gerard can read, what he's thinking.

"Frank and I are arguing about mustard," Bob says. "Evil or not evil?"

"Totally not evil," Gerard says. "Unless its Grey Poupon, that shit's weird." Frank thinks he looks relieved, and he wonders how much all of them are waiting for a conflict, waiting for a blow-up, waiting for a discussion about sandwich condiments to escalate to the point where people are pulling out silver daggers and not just to cut the bread with…

"Want me to make you a sandwich?" Frank asks Gerard, as Bob picks up his refrigerated equipment and walks out of the room.

"I'll just have a bite of yours," Gerard says, and brushes his fingers across Frank's hand where he's holding the plate. Gerard's hand stays there, and Frank can hear his breathing change, hear his heart speed up. He turns to Gerard with a smile and notices Gerard has a matching smile as he pulls him in for a kiss. Of everything that's happened, even just being physically here in the house, touching Gerard is the best, the absolute best.

Frank presses his mouth to Gerard's neck, to his favorite spot, where he can feel Gerard's pulse under his tongue. When Frank does it, Gerard makes a kind of strangled noise, like he's trying hard to hold back something louder and less controlled. Frank pushes him against the wall, and Gerard's shoulders tense, and Frank knows he should be a little more careful, because it seems like it's easier now to do harder things, like push Gerard around, and Frank isn't sure it's not having touch again, or whether whatever he is now is stronger than he used to be. But when he shoves Gerard back, Gerard doesn't do anything to resist, and that inflames Frank even more. He shoves his hands up under Gerard's shirt, sucks on his neck, feels Gerard's hands clench at his sides and then at the material of Frank's shirt just above his hips, like Gerard isn't sure what to do with his hands, like the wrong thing might make Frank stop.

"Someone's going to come in," Gerard says quietly. "They're just in the other room."

"No one's going to come in," Frank says as he places a hand over Gerard's hip, slides it down over Gerard's erection, squeezes hard. Gerard's eyes squeeze shut, his head whacks against the back of the wall.

"We shouldn't," Gerard says, though it's a half-hearted protest as Frank strokes him through his pants.

"But I want to," Frank says.

What he wants is this, to make Gerard come in the kitchen with everyone just around the corner. He'd even try to do it with Gerard's pants on, but he wants his hand on Gerard's cock, wants to feel the weight of it in his hand. He opens Gerard's pants and the angle awkward, his wrist already aching but he wants it right now and Gerard's holding back noises that means he wants it, too.

"Ok," Gerard breathes out. "Ok, whatever you want."

Frank squeezes his fingers around Gerard's cock, rubs his thumb over the tip and Gerard chokes back a groan, his stomach muscles tightening. Frank wants to be kissing him when he comes, wants to shove his tongue into Gerard's mouth when Gerard falls apart, and so he strokes and squeezes Gerard's cock, licks Gerard's bottom lip messily, slides his tongue all around Gerard's teeth. It's urgent and lacking finesse but they're in the kitchen, Gerard up against the wall, bucking up into Frank's hands, his jeans slipping down his thighs and then Gerard's coming, hot spurts on Frank's fingers, kissing opened-mouthed and urgent.

Before Frank can even catch his breath, Gerard's on his knees, pulling open Frank's jeans, pulling out his cock, sucking it into his mouth. Frank realizes now how hard Gerard was trying to keep quiet, because he's about to cry out when he remembers everyone's just around the corner. He closes his eyes, thrusts into Gerard's mouth, concentrates on not making a sound and he's coming before he can even warn Gerard, hands tight in his hair.

Frank feels euphoric, energized, like he could go running around the house. When Gerard stands, he looks dazed, a small smile making its way through Gerard's shock as they fumble to clean themselves up and slink into the living room.

No one says anything, though Ray's decided this afternoon to re-do the floor in the kitchen and they've apparently just missed him walking in on them, his arms full of tools. Frank can still feel how tense Gerard is at how close they came to getting caught. Pete's trying to convince Mikey of something Frank can't quite understand and doesn't want to ask about, Bob's reading the grimoire which still gives Frank the chills. Bob has the book balanced in his hands like it's a platter, just on the tips of his fingers. Gerard is sketching and Frank has his back up against the side of the chair, watching out the window, rubbing his hands idly over the knees of his jeans, feeling the fabric and thinking that maybe he ought to be reading or something, so he doesn't seem so pointless, but Bob had been perfectly clear that Frank wasn't supposed to touch any of the books, for his own safety and their own.

It's enough for him to just be sitting there, watching Gerard's hands moving over the paper over the side arm of the chair. Pete and Mikey are being vaguely pornographic, even though they're barely touching each other. It's the expression on Pete's face when he touches Mikey and Mikey actually looks up at him; it looks so plainly like hunger and Frank can only imagine what they'd be doing if they were alone. Mikey looks perfectly content to just have Pete around while he looks through one of the books Bob has given to him. Frank admired Gerard's capacity for ignoring what his little brother is up to, and ignoring the fact that a ghost hunter was carrying a spell book around his living room like it is dowsing rod.

"Um," Ray says from the kitchen, and Bob stops walking around, still holding the book aloft. "Um, Bob?" Frank laughs as Bob closes the spell book, sets it down in his bag and zips it up, and disappears into the kitchen. There's quiet and Frank looks up at smiles at Gerard, who's drawing his grandmother.

There's a loud tear of floor material and Frank thinks Ray's just called Bob over for the muscle when the sound is followed by a long stretch of more loud, furious tearing.

"What the hell are you doing to my kitchen," Gerard asks nonchalantly. He elbows Frank. "Go check, ok?" His hand lingers on Frank's arm.

There's a little bit of dust in the air when Frank goes in, and a larger pile of flooring near the sink. "Wow, you guys work fast - " his voice stutters and halts on the last word when he sees what they're both looking at.

There are wood floorboards under the linoleum, the kind that polished up would be a beautiful hardwood floor. Except that, carved into the wood are a bunch of symbols, too systematic to be random. Frank goes to stand where Bob and Ray are and he can see at least three intersecting lines of symbols, things that looks like stars, and roosters, and hour glasses and concentric circles.

"I didn't do that," Frank says. Ray looks doubtful.

"We're going to have to torch the house," Bob says and Ray grabs Bob's arm.

"Snap the fuck out of it, asshole, we're not burning my house down. Frank," Ray says. "Go get Gerard."

Frank hurries into the living room where neither Gerard nor Pete and Mikey seem to have heard Bob's threat about burning the house down.

"Uh, Gee," Frank says and Gerard looks up and grins hugely at him. Frank thinks it's the first time he's called Gerard his nickname aloud, and he wants to get lost in Gerard's smile, but he's trying to get Gerard to come into the kitchen without alerting Pete and Mikey, though, Frank thinks, if the noise of Bob tearing up more of the floor gets any louder, it's not going to matter.

"Can you, uh, can you come in the kitchen with me?" Frank asks and Gerard sets down his drawing and looks up concerned.

"Frankie, what - " Gerard starts to say and Frank shakes his head.

Quietly, he says, "Everything's fine. Well, no, there's something crazy in the kitchen, but it's not - it's not me," Frank says, vaguely, and just gets up and walks halfway to the kitchen, willing Gerard to follow him.

Almost all of the linoleum is pulled up and Frank can see that the pattern is forming a complicated circle of intersecting lines, some which seem to extend outside of the kitchen, presumably to the floorboards of the rest of the room.

"Seriously, we need to torch this, now," Bob says. He can't seem to understand why Ray's expression looks like Bob has just cursed his mother.

"What is this?" Gerard asks, toeing cautiously at one of the symbols.

"I don't know," Bob says, like that's the thing that makes it the most dangerous. "But we're all in it now, and I can splash this with holy water and douse it in salt and grind morning seeds into the symbols but it isn't going to do a damn thing because this is inside the house."

Ray kneels down and touches the symbol, as though expecting it to burn him. When nothing happens, he smoothes his fingers over it. "These are old," Ray says, knocking his knuckle on the wood. "This wood is old. These are probably the original floorboards. You'd be surprised how old most of the houses and buildings we see are," Ray says.

"Listen, can we talk home renovation later?" Frank says, "I want to know why the kitchen floor has a secret layer of hand-carved occult symbols."

"They aren't Occult," Bob says, but his explanation is cut short when Mikey and Pete come in.

"Holy fucking shit," Pete says, impressed. Mikey takes several steps back.

"It's probably in the hallway, too," Bob says when he sees Mikey backing up. Mikey looks like he wants to climb the walls.

"So, should we all go stand outside?" Mikey says. "These aren't good symbols, I'm guessing."

"It's not usually good when there's anything carved into the wood under your linoleum, no," Bob says.

"But what does it mean?" Gerard demands, and Bob shrugs.

"I need to go call my mother," Ray says, and crosses himself as he walks out of the kitchen and next door to his side of the house.

  
Gerard kicks open the door with his foot, the laundry basket balanced on his hip. It's full of his clothes, and Frank's, and something that's either Mikey's hoodie or maybe Ray's, Gerard doesn't recognize it, but it's in the basket so he's going to wash it. He doesn't really like doing laundry when he has to think about it, but when he's on his way down the basement stairs, it really isn't that bad. Toss the contents of the basket into the washer, add soap, turn it on, and don't forget to come back when it's done to put it in the dryer. Easy, and like so many other things Gerard puts off doing, so much easier than it seemed when he was trying to avoid it.

He likes his basement; it's quiet and cool and he likes seeing the furnace, the hot water tank, knowing that what's down here is making what's upstairs work, like he's somehow stepped into the clock heart of his house. He can see Ray's fingerprints all over the place, the perfect nails in the stairs, the new wood frame around the storm window, the electric wires he carefully tied with electrical tape and tucked back up into the ceiling. He can also see, across the other side of the house, the cabinets full of Ray's tools, the rows of paint buckets, the extra square pieces of drywall, spare lengths of carpet, and dozens of things that hold things together that Gerard would need a manual even to identify.

He starts tossing the clothes into the washer, his fingers stopping when they get tangled in the sleeve of the mysterious hoodie.

"That's mine," Brian says.

Gerard turns, and Schechter is standing with his elbow against the dryer.

"Jesus, Brian, how long have you been down here?"

Schechter just shrugs. "Thanks for doing my laundry."

"Do your own laundry," Gerard says, but he throws the hoodie into the washer anyway and starts it up. It sounds like a mini waterfall has been turned on, the familiar mechanical sounds of cleaning.

"This is a good basement," Brian says.

Gerard nods. "I was just thinking that," he says, "How much I like it down here." He's glad someone else thinks it, too, that it's not just one of his weird things that he notices that Mikey will make fun of him for later. "Seriously, Brian, why are you down here? Bob's been looking for you for, like, two days."

"I didn't go anywhere," Schechter says and Gerard just shrugs.

"I don't know, but you'd better not be sleeping here, Ray will have a fit and decide he has to finish the basement and put a room down here."

"You make sure he doesn't do that," Schechter says, urgently. Gerard startles.

"Hey, if he wants to finish his own basement, especially if you're going to be hanging out down here like it's a fucking guest room..."

"You can't let him. He can't do any more work down here. It's already weak enough as it is."

"What's weak?" Gerard says.

"The door," Schechter says. Gerard turns around and looks up at the basement door, then back at Schechter.

"Ok," Gerard says, though he doesn't understand. "I'm going back upstairs, are you coming?"

"No," Schechter says.

"Fine, if you're going to stay, will you at least tell me when my laundry's done?"

Schechter doesn't answer and Gerard closes the basement door behind him, but he leaves the light on, because if Schechter's down here for whatever reason, he shouldn't be in the dark.

Bob is already back when Gerard comes upstairs, talking to Ray and ignoring Frank and Gerard wonders if he's going to have to intervene. He still remembers the way Bob's spell or whatever had Frank around the throat. Gerard remembers how Bob was the one who brought Frank back, but something's changed with him and Gerard can't put his finger on it, except he seems like he's watching Frank and waiting for the moment when Gerard will look away.

"Everything all set?" Gerard asks, and Bob looks up from where he was watching Ray stir a bucket of plaster.

Bob shrugs. "The house is safe," he says. "This one's clear, too," he says, and he reveals that he's holding some other measuring device in his hand. "As clear as it's going to be," Bob says again, and pointedly does not look at Frank.

Frank says, "I'm gonna go smoke on the porch."

Bob pulls out his phone before Gerard can say anything, and he's about to follow Frank out onto the porch when Bob hangs up his phone with a curse.

Ray says, "Still can't reach him?"

"I don't know where that little shit went, but I don't like people just disappearing," Bob says. "That's not appropriate etiquette in this business."

"He's in the basement," Gerard says, like it's obvious. Bob just stares at him for a moment, and then runs down to the basement in a clatter of boots with the phone in his hand. He comes back up a moment later.

"There's fucking no one down there," Bob says, gesturing with his phone at Gerard. "What's wrong with you?" It's less of an accusation and more of a real concern. Bob comes over and tries to take Gerard's pulse with his fingers on Gerard's wrist but Gerard twists away, wanting to get back to the basement to see if Bob's playing some kind of joke.

"I just saw him, like, ten minute ago," Gerard insists, walking halfway down the stairs. The laundry is still going, still in the rinse cycle, he can hear it. It can't even have been ten minutes. He calls out, "Brian, seriously, what's going on?" There's no answer. "Brian?"

Gerard startles when Bob appears behind him on the stairs.

"Tell me what happened," Bob says. He's holding the EMF reader, sweeping it back and forth in front of him as he walks down the stairs.

"Nothing happened, I just talked to Schechter when I was putting in the laundry."

"What did he say?"

"I don't know!" Gerard says, having made a complete circle through the basement. He doesn't know where Schechter could have gone, or why he'd be hiding. "We talked about the fucking laundry. He said - " Gerard says and stops, realizing that some of what they'd talked about now seems extremely strange even though it seemed perfectly normal while it was happening. "He told me not to let Ray do any more work down here?"

"Ray, get down here!" Bob shouts. A moment later, Ray comes running down.

"What?" he asks. "What's wrong?" Ray looks nervously at the EMF reader in Bob's hands.

"What work have you done on the basement recently?"

Ray gives him a look and then scrunches his forehead up in thought. "I guess, uh, well, I redid some of the wiring a few weeks ago, I put up some drywall over by the furnace, redid the molding - "

"Ok, ok," Bob says.

"Why does it matter?" Ray asks. "Is something wrong down here?"

Bob doesn't answer, but asks Gerard, "What else did he say?"

"Who?" Frank says, at the top of the stairs, crowding behind Ray. "Gerard, are you ok?"

The feeling he gets at Frank's voice, the warm rush, gives him the urge to climb up the stairs to be near him. "I'm fine, Frank," Gerard says, and looks at Frank for a long moment.

"What did he say?" Bob says, more urgently.

"He said it was weaker down here," Gerard says, looking over where Schechter had been standing.

"What was weaker?" Bob and Frank say at the same time and then look at each other accusatorily.

"The door," Gerard says. He feels Bob stiffen beside him.

Ray says, quietly, "What door?" and when Gerard looks at Frank, his eyes are alarmingly wide.

"Everyone upstairs now," Bob says, gently but firmly.

"Are you saying I can't even go into my own basement now?" Gerard says.

"Upstairs," Bob says, through gritted teeth. "Not you," he says to Gerard, who he all but shoves back down by the washer. Gerard thinks he might actually take a swing at Bob, he just wants to make his fist connect with something, and then the door closes to the upstairs and Gerard feels all the anger leave him in a rush.

"You've been pretty temperamental lately," Bob says, like it's a harmless observation, like he's commenting on Gerard wearing a lot of black lately.

"And now you think I'm hallucinating," Gerard says with a sigh. His chest hurts. He feels weary, like he hasn't slept in days, like his insomnia is back.

"I never said that," Bob says. "But if you're the only one who can see Schechter, that makes two missing people you've been able to see that no one else can."

"Frank wasn't missing," Gerard says.

"No, he was dead," Bob says. "The fact that you could see him when he was dead is actually worse, not better, you know."

Gerard rests his hands on the washer, leans its rumble. "You think this has something to do with me? I mean, you think...I'm making this all happen?"

"I don't know about that," Bob says, "But sometimes what actually happens isn't what was intended by whoever starts the game. And it's significant that you can do things that the rest of us can't."

"But I can't see Schechter now."

"That doesn't mean you didn't see him before. And hey, I'm glad, I thought the guy had fucking punked out on us."

"Yeah, it's a lot better that he's disappeared into the house."  
"It is," Bob says, and Gerard gapes at him, because Gerard was just being sarcastic. "At least we know where he is. Better than if we didn't know where he'd gone at all," Bob says. "Are you gonna wait for your laundry?"

"Yeah, I just need - I just need to think," Gerard says. "Send Frank down?"

Bob makes a displeased sound, but he doesn't argue.

Gerard realizes that Bob was maybe implying that Frank was doing all this, making people disappear.

Frank comes down a few minutes later, his hands tucked in his sleeves. "Hi," he says, and Gerard rushes up to him, buries his face in the neck of Frank's shirt, just holds him close and breathes. Frank rubs his hands along Gerard's back and Gerard feels it like trails of light, rearranging everything in him.

"Were you scared?" Frank asks, "When you saw Schechter?"

"Not really," Gerard says, 'But I just thought he was Schechter, you know, not a ghost."  
"You're not scared of ghosts," Frank says plainly, and Gerard feels such warmth when Frank leans in and kisses him.

"We're going to bed, Schechter," Gerard says over his shoulder when he and Frank are halfway up the stairs. "Wherever you are. So, uh, see you in the morning? Be careful," he says, and closes the door, and wonders if he should go back down and check again. He still leaves the light on.

  
Frank waits until Gerard is asleep and then he goes downstairs to the basement. He walks around the whole place twice, and he's not sure what he's looking for, other than some clue about how Gerard saw Schechter, some familiar feeling that Frank might recognize from before, because maybe Schechter is in his place now, and if that's the case, Frank has to help make things right. He's is about to go back up the stairs and ask Ray if he could go down his entrance and see if it made a difference when Frank hears the door. When he looks up, Bob is coming down the stairs.

"What are you doing down here?" Bob says, and Frank knows it's a normal question but something about the way Bob asks it, something about all the questions Bob asks him, makes him feel cornered.

"I was trying to see if I could see Schechter."

"What makes you think he's even down here?" Bob says. He's not advancing on Frank, but he sits down on the stairs as though blocking Frank's way back up.

"Gerard saw him, and so I thought...." Frank stops. "You don't believe Gerard?"

"I believe that Gerard believes he saw Schechter. But there are lots of powers of illusion," Bob says. He looks at Frank for a long moment, and then looks down at the flashlight in his hands. "Like how we can all see you," Bob says.

"But you said - " Frank says, getting angry, frustrated, scared, "But you said you brought me back. You said you thought I was stuck and you - "

"I was wrong," Bob says. "You're not what I thought you were when I tried to help."

"So you're not going to help me anymore, is that what you're saying?"

"I'm here to make sure I don't make things worse," Bob says. "I thought you were just.....going to stop once you got here."

"Stop what?" Frank says.

"But then you took Schechter and I don't even know what you did with him, if he's hidden or gone or - "

"I didn't do anything to Schechter!" Frank protests. "If something happened to him, it wasn't me!"

"And don't you see what you're doing to Gerard?" Bob says, and Frank stills. "Yeah, see, I knew you knew about it. How can you not? I knew the innocent thing was a ploy."

"But what am I doing to him?" Frank's voice sounds weaker than he wants it to. "I know I'm doing something, but I don't - " he stops.

"You're poisoning him."

"I'm – not," Frank protests, but his uncertainty makes him hesitate. "So what are you going to do to me?" Frank asks.

"Nothing," Bob says. "I'm just going to let you show us who you really are, and then I'll know what to do."

Bob turns and goes back upstairs before Frank can say anything else.

"Schechter?" he says into the empty basement. "I didn't do this. I mean, I didn't mean to." There's no reply, so he walks back upstairs, doesn't see Bob or anyone, and just crawls back into bed, where Gerard immediately curls up against his side.

  
It's still dark, still the middle of the night, when Frank hears, "Do you not have enough supernatural things going on in your life, Mikey?" as Gerard chases Mikey up the stairs where Mikey is presumably going to flat iron his hair pre-ghost hunt. But Frank knows that's not the way to win Mikey over - regardless of Frank's weird effect on their lives, Mikey just wants to go out and do something with Pete, something Pete likes. Frank understands. It's like watching Gerard and wanting to draw, even though Frank knows he has no artistic talent. His fingers itch to do what Gerard does, to be closer, somehow, through sharing that. Frank gets up and goes downstairs and opens the book of family genealogy that Ray found, and a whole chapter later, he sees a glow around Pete. Kind of faintly blue, like an aura, but not, really, not at all. Like Pete's backlit by a giant neon sign.

"Hey," Pete says when he sees Frank looking and Frank kind of blinks. The glow is still there. "The book putting you to sleep? You look kind of dazed."

"Yeah," Frank says, still squinting, not really hearing Pete. He looks down at his own hand, to make sure he's not glowing, then around the kitchen. Nothing else glows like Pete does. "Yeah, it's kind of boring," Frank says to fill the silence. "I don't even know what most of the words mean."

Pete laughs. "It's why I like the action stuff," Pete says. "Not that anything really happens at these things," Pete says quickly, like he thinks the first thing Frank will do is tell Gerard on him. "I just mean, like, the real experience. Going out to these houses, these places where things happened, where you can just feel it. It's nothing like a book."

He doesn't want to spoil Pete's fun, but it's not - this hasn't been an adventure. He needs to remember that Pete wasn't here the whole time, for the haunting, the séances, the things attacking Gerard and Mikey - Pete still thinks it's a ghost story, told to scare and thrill. Frank suspects Pete doesn't really know much about the real thing when it comes to ghosts. Frank, who is the real thing, isn't sure what to say.

"We're going to a gazebo that was supposed to have been built on the spot where this house burned down," Pete says, talking animatedly. "And everyone says if you stay there, sitting in the gazebo at the right point at night, you can talk to the ghosts, hear where they are, what their stories are."

Frank stares at Pete, and wonders if maybe Pete has no idea what Frank's been through. "It's not like - "

"Oh, no, it's totally real, I saw it last week, I'm just bringing Mikey back," Pete says. Frank had been about to say that it's not like that, that being a ghost isn't like that, isn't about haunting a gazebo and waiting to tell people your stories, but then Frank realizes maybe he doesn't really know what being a ghost is like at all. For all he knows, there are all sorts of different types of ghosts, and from what Bob says, everyone can be categorized into different levels of sentience, power, malevolence. For all he knows, Pete's gazebo ghosts are something else.

"Be careful," Frank says, and Pete kind of smirks at him.

"Don't worry," Pete says and Frank sees flashes of the shadow that attacked Gerard, the lurking feeling of danger. But then Mikey comes thundering down the stairs, a tangle of long limbs and dark eyeliner and he grabs Pete and tugs him toward the door, waving over his shoulder at Frank. Pete's blue glow seems to disperse, like steam disappearing after a shower.

"Wake me up when you get home," Gerard shouts down the stairs. Mikey waves without looking back behind him and the door closes behind him.

"A fucking gazebo in the middle of the fucking night," Gerard says, walking down the stairs as though pounding his rage into each step. "I don't like that kid, I don't like him at all. Pete, I mean," Gerard says. "I like my brother. I love my brother, though sometimes I hate him, too."

"Yeah," Frank says. "They'll be ok," he adds, though Gerard still looks miserable. "Come on, you can look through Bob's books. _Demons of the Other Realms_." Frank says, reading a title from the pile without actually touching it like he knows he's not supposed to.

"Other realms!" Gerard says and sounds even more miserable. "How many realms are there?" Gerard sits with a thump down in his favorite chair. "Also, my kitchen's a mess."

Frank's seen Gerard like this before. That alone should give him pause, because he and Gerard are mostly like strangers, except for the fact where Frank knows a whole lot more about Gerard than Gerard knows about him. Still, Frank thinks it can't really be a bad thing if he knows what Gerard needs right now.

"Hey," Frank says, and presses a kiss to Gerard's temple. "Don't worry about your brother, Pete's not going to get him into any trouble. Anyway, take a look around here, you're in a haunted house."

Gerard's laugh is dry. "It's not haunted anymore," Gerard says, sliding over in the chair so Frank can come and perch on the arm of it.

  
Gerard's been carrying the list of things he should call Bob about in his pocket, right next to Frank's obituary, like they're both talismans that will cancel each other out. He feels them when he fidgets and shoves his hands into his pockets. "You seem pretty calm about all the mystical things on your floor," Bob says, coming into the kitchen and walking cautiously around the exposed boards.

"It's probably because I don't know what they are," Gerard says, which is a half-truth, because he just doesn't feel bothered by them, even though everyone else is. "They're pretty," he says, and then waits for Bob's disapproving glare, but it doesn't come. Bob just looks at him.

"You've got a good attitude about it," Bob says. "It'll keep you strong."

"Thanks," Gerard says a little awkwardly.

"I hope I'll be out of your life soon," Bob says.

"Don't say that," Gerard says. "You're helping."

Bob looks away. "I'm going with Ray to talk to his mother about the house. We'll be back this afternoon."

"You're going to meet Mrs. Toro?" Frank says, coming into the kitchen with a tower of empty coffee cups which he deposits on the counter. He waggles his eyebrows. Gerard notices that while Bob laughs it off, something about his posture changes when Frank comes into the conversation.

"What are you saying about my mother?" Ray says, coming into the room. He doesn't wait for an answer though, just has his coat and says, "You ready?" to Bob. "I'll bring you back some lasagna, Frankie," Ray says.

"God, that stuff is the best. Say hi to Mrs. Toro for me," Frank says and then he freezes. It takes Ray a moment to react, Gerard a moment longer. Of course, Ray can't do that, because Mrs. Toro thinks Frank died. "I mean – "

Ray says, and he reaches out to pat Frank on the shoulder. "Hey, it's ok. We'll eat some in memory of you."

Frank waits until Ray and Bob are gone to turn to Gerard and really react to it. He doesn't say anything, just scrubs his hands over his face, looks at Gerard with what's obviously a very forced smile and says, "Here, let's look in Bob's books and see if we can figure out some of the symbols."

  
When Bob and Ray return, it isn't with an air of triumph. Frank can tell the moment they walk through the door. Bob is carrying two aluminum trays, presumably filled with food, which he puts in Gerard's refrigerator.

"So my mother doesn't know much about the house," Ray says. They've all assumed their usual positions, Gerard in his ugly chair, Frank on the floor leaning against his legs, Bob in the doorway, Ray sitting on a chair borrowed from the kitchen, Mikey sitting on the stairs, texting, as though he's not part of the conversation. "She never lived here, only visited during the summer, with the family. She says it was vacant for a year and a half after great-granddad Alex died."

"That gap could give us the answer," Bob says. "While the house was unoccupied, it could have picked up someone who got off the spiritual highway at the wrong exit. But it doesn't explain why they'd be dormant, unless there was something that got stirred up during a….." He stops, as though completing the thought in his head, "When did you start renovating?" he says, turning to Ray.

"A couple years ago," he says. "Aunt Nina was going to hire someone, but it kind of became my project and….." Ray trials off. "You think we – you think I stirred something up?" he says repeating Bob's phrase back to him distastefully.

"I don't know," Bob says.

"Then why did it only get me?" Frank says. "Was it just because I was the first one to….have died here?"

Ray looks stricken, the way he does every time someone brings up Frank's death.

"Maybe," Bob says vaguely, and then he gets up without explanation and says, "I'm going over to Ray's, I need to check something," and he doesn't come back. A few minutes later, Ray follows him.

Gerard looks at Frank and shrugs. "It's ok, Frankie," he says. "You got stuck in the house but we got you back, don't forget that." Still, it bothers Frank a little that Gerard doesn't seem to see how dangerous he might be, how much they don't know about him.

  
Gerard leans forward and kisses Frank, more out of frustration than anything else, because Frank won't seem to believe that there isn't anything wrong with him. Frank kisses back with complete focus, Gerard gets swept along with it, upstairs, into the bedroom where he feels his head finally clear.

Frank grabs Gerard tight around his wrist and presses Gerard's hand over his mouth, and Frank can't possibly mean what Gerard thinks he means. Frank's mouth is hot against Gerard's hand, his breath heavy and Frank nods, quick, and Gerard is quick to agree, because, he just wants what Frank wants and if Frank wants this, then Gerard wants to give it to him.

"You'll tell me if it's too much," Gerard says.

Frank nods again, and pushes his mouth back up into Gerard's hand so Gerard tightens his fingers, presses down harder, and then moves so his thumb and the heel of his hand is covering Frank's nose. Frank makes a noise in his throat and arches his back. Gerard holds his hand over Frank's mouth, waiting, and then pulls it away. Frank breathes in deep, then short and shallow, and reaches for Gerard's shoulders, tightening his fingers in Gerard's shirt.

"Do it again," Frank says, breathing in sharply through his nose, tilting his chin up.

Gerard doesn't hesitate as much the second time, and it's a scary, to know what he's doing could hurt Frank, but the way Frank is moving underneath him, like he wants it so bad, like Gerard is giving him air instead of withholding it, the heat of it is making Gerard tremble. So he pulls back his hand and Frank gasps for breath but before Frank can really breathe in, Gerard kisses him, then moves so he can pinch Frank's nose. Frank's whole body arches up against Gerard's, and Frank makes a hot, harsh pleading noise and kisses Gerard hard, frenzied, his hands on Gerard's back pressing him close, so close Gerard thinks he might be crushing Frank's chest.

Gerard releases his fingers, feels Frank drawing air deeply into his chest. "Christ, Gee," he says, and Gerard sucks on his collarbone, reaching up so his fingers are on Frank's lips, not quite covering his mouth, but the intention is there, and Frank moans. Gerard thinks of the razor, how he wishes he had it now, so he could draw it across Frank's chest. He's not really sure why, it's not the sort of thing he ever – it's not like it wasn't hot but it was also a little more dangerous than he ever thought he'd like, and this – this control over Frank's breathing is a little bit more than Gerard's comfortable with. He feels panicked, but he's not stopping, and Frank's moving, restless, needy, and Gerard's going to fuck him like this, with his hand over Frank's mouth.

Gerard likes the way Frank is moving under his hands, restless and needy, and Gerard can tell Frank wants to get fucked liked this, with Gerard's hands over his nose and mouth, and Gerard isn't sure he has the concentration to do both, be inside Frank and be responsible for his breathing. He's not sure he can do anything except this breathing thing, because just that and evenly thrusting their hips together, just Frank's hot breath on the palm of his hand is driving him crazy.

He slides his hand up underneath Frank's shirt, then tugs it off entirely, the material catching at Frank's chin, and Gerard thinks about covering Frank's face with it, but it scares him too much, not being able to see Frank's eyes, not being able to see if he's hurting him. Frank reaches to do the same with Gerard's clothes, and Gerard lets him, briefly letting his fingers linger over Frank's lips, and Frank's hands stutter at Gerard's hips, and then it's all a frenzy of removing the rest of their clothes.

Gerard decides that before they do anything else, that he has to trace Frank's tattoos under his fingers, and Frank lays still, sighing, as Gerard scrapes the very edge of his nails against the dark blue ink of birds and pistols, words and promises written all over Frank's skin.

Frank whines and without thinking, Gerard covers Frank's mouth, a scold, a punishment, and Frank's shoulders practically lift off the bed.

"This is what you want," Gerard says. Frank's eyes are wide, and Gerard remembers he has to move his hand for Frank to answer. He lets go, and Frank reaches up and pulls Gerard to him, kissing him harshly, their teeth clacking.

"Yes," Frank gasps. "Don't stop."

Gerard doesn't stop, one hand over Frank's mouth, another pushing inside Frank, one finger at a time. He has to pull his hand back from Frank's mouth to hold onto his hips and push himself inside, but its easy, so much easier to control when Frank gets to breathe in, when he gets to breathe out, when Gerard is right on top of him, Frank's chest right under his.

It's just as easy to pinch Frank's nose closed, cover Frank's mouth with his own, kissing him so their mouths only separate when Gerard wants them to. It's only a few times of Frank gasping, near desperate for breath, that he's arching, coming against Gerard's stomach, deep inhalations that lift Gerard up off the bed.

Gerard slams his hips too hard against Frank's, caught up in Frank's chest hollowing each time he breathes in deep, and he comes when Frank breathily says his name, suddenly exhausted, his arms weak, his eyes heavy.

He wants to talk to Frank about what just happened, but he can barely move, can't find the words, and its with Frank's steady even breath at his ear, that he surrenders to sleep.

  
Gerard finds himself standing in the arch of a door that seems too large to actually be to his kitchen, but his kitchen table is in front of him, and Schechter is sitting there, smoking, with an ashtray full of butts like he's been there for hours.

"Hi," Brian says, "Sure took you a while. I thought you knew your way around this place."

"My kitchen?" Gerard says.

Schechter takes a long drag of his cigarette and then sets it down. "Sit down, we need to talk."

"I remember the first time you said that to me," Gerard says, because it feels very close, like it was just moments ago.

"The first time? Or the most important time."

"The most important time you didn't give me the option to talk."

Schechter smiles, like Gerard's gotten the answer right, and he holds out his pack of cigarettes. Gerard takes one, and it tastes like Schechter, which is weird, because it's not something Gerard's supposed to recognize, but it's like they kissed before Gerard was standing in the archway, like he just can't remember. Schechter seems to see something on his face and smiles again.

"That's what I'm talking about," he says, with a nod of his head toward Gerard.

"You - this?" Gerard says and touches his fingers to his mouth. Mikey's gonna kill him if he made out with his boss.

"I knew you before I was Mikey's boss," Schechter says, "and believe me, I've had a lot of time to think about it. But that's not why you're here."

"I - " Gerard says and he stops, because Schechter's standing up and walking towards where Gerard's sitting and Gerard's almost sure they're going kiss - again - or maybe this is why Schechter tastes familiar, because Gerard knew this was going to happen.

"I need to you to come here."

"But I'm here right now," Gerard says, puzzled.

"But you're also somewhere else," Brian says.

"But I've got Frank," Gerard says. Brian's face shutters and he lights another cigarette. "You helped me get him back."

"Frank's not the problem," Schechter says and he takes two quick drags before he adds, "But he's also not the answer. Finish your cigarette," he tells Gerard, and when Gerard takes another drag, he wakes up.

Gerard looks at Frank sleeping, grabs his phone and goes downstairs, to the kitchen, sits where he sat in the dream, and dials Schechter's number. His voice mail picks up, like it's done for the last three days. "Where the fuck are you, man?" Gerard asks. "You're freaking me out." And then he hangs up, and goes back to bed. Frank stirs when Gerard lifts back the covers and Frank immediately rolls toward him and presses his mouth to Gerard's throat.

"Went for a middle of the night smoke?" Frank says. Gerard just sighs into Frank's hair, and pulls him close, and when Frank's close, he feels it, that kind of numbness he hasn't felt since he got sober, but sharp and clear, not like being high, but like Frank is a veil that keeps everything else from getting too close. Gerard feels himself drop into sleep, like Frank's put a heavy blanket over him and turned out all the lights. He doesn't dream anything the rest of the night, and in the morning, he can't remember what Brian's cigarettes tasted like at all. Brian does not return his message.

  
Frank wakes before the sun's all the way up, but he can feel it coming, see the pale, sickly sky breaking away from night. He tucks the blankets back around Gerard and goes downstairs. Bob isn't here, in his usual camping spot in the living room; he's spent the night at Ray's, and the idea makes Frank want to go in and peek at the windows, he doesn't know why. He doesn't really want to invade Ray's privacy, but the idea of seeing that side of Bob – that Bob has that side – makes him seem less frightening, really.

Frank startles when he sees that the living room isn't empty. Pete is lying in the middle of the floor, his head on a folded up sweatshirt, but he doesn't really seem to be sleeping.

"Hey," Pete says, sitting up. "I thought I was the only one who was up this early."

Frank shrugs. "I'm not really a morning person."

"I never went to sleep," Pete says.

"Wait, does Gerard know you're here?" Frank asks.

"Who says I am?" Frank thinks he's really not awake enough for this, for Pete's weird sense of humor, but he sits down in Gerard's chair because it seems the easiest thing to do. "Mikey's upstairs," Pete says. "I was just about to go wake him. I was getting seriously bored."

Pete's starting to glow again, and Frank wonders if he knows. "You're kind of – "

"Blue, right?" Pete says. He seems pleased. "It gets like this if I get too bored."

Frank has a feeling the word 'bored' isn't quite the right one. There's something a little more dangerously restless about Pete, something in the pulse of the blue around him.

"Want to see how I make it stop for a while?" he says.

Frank ought to say no, but Pete wasn't really waiting for his answer. Pete comes over, stands in front of Frank, who slouches lower into the chair. Pete puts his hands on the arms of Frank's chair, leans closer, and then places his fingers on Frank's chin. It's not sweet, it's actually a little like Pete's about to put his fingers in Frank's mouth and pull something out. "See?" Pete says, and Frank watches as the glow fades. "Mikey's the best at it," Pete says, "But you'll do."

Frank feels something like panic when Pete's thumb trails down to Frank's throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut and twists away from Pete. The room spins a little bit, and when he opens his eyes again, Pete's back lying on the floor, his head on the sweatshirt. Frank stands up, says Pete's name, but Pete's eyes are closed. Frank says it again, and then goes and sits on the porch, closing the door quietly, and smokes until the dream fades like the way Pete's blue glow had.

  
Gerard's barely done finishing Frank's bowl of cereal and the cup of coffee Mikey abandoned when Pete showed up when Bob comes charging in. He doesn't even bother to knock, speaking a spell in a loud, clear voice before he's even all the way through the door, which closes with a slam behind him. Frank can't tell whether it's the spell or just the quick, forceful motion of Bob. He looks taller, holding himself up high, a small book balanced in one palm, the other holding what looks like a bunch of herbs tied to a stick he might have picked up from the backyard. Frank is frozen in place, watching Bob, captivated either by his entrance and the rhythm of the words or the thrall of the spell, he can't tell which, but it takes him longer than it should to notice that Bob is blocked by Gerard, who is trying to stop Bob from advancing further into the house, Ray, who came over when he heard the door slam and is asking Bob to slow down, and Mikey has been shocked silent, his mouth open in a perfect o. Pete, Frank notices, is standing frozen, like Frank, in some sort of unwilling thrall.

"Just stop talking for a second," Gerard shouts, doing a kind of acrobatic dance in front of Bob, like it will somehow stop him. Bob continues with the spell, louder, until he reaches what Frank can only assume is a critical stopping point, and he turns a page, tucks the open book under his arm, and lights the herbs on the stick on fire.

"What have we talked about, no open flames in the house, especially not on sticks!" Ray says, and Frank wants to laugh, but he can't. He's watching the fire consume the herbs, watching the trail of smoke curl up toward the ceiling. Out of the corner of his vision, he has a very foggy awareness of Pete watching, too.

"What the hell is going on?" Gerard shouts, when he finally turns and notices how Frank - and Pete - are frozen where they stand.

"What's wrong with Pete?" Mikey asks, then takes a step closer to his brother. "Holy shit," he whispers.

Bob doesn't answer any of them, only watches until the herbs are burned down and the flame just starts on the wood, and then he blows it out.

"Stay where you are," Bob says to both he and Pete, and Frank can't really do anything else.

"What are you doing to them," Gerard demands angrily.

"Do you know the one thing I never asked about?" Bob says, like he's not really talking to any of them, "I never thought about possession. I never even considered it." He waves his hand at Frank and Frank kind of teeters on the spot. "That's right, you little bitch, you've been here the whole time, haven't you?"

"Let him go!" Gerard shouts.

"I can't do that," Bob says, finally looking right at Gerard. "I can't trust you, can I, you disgusting piece of shit."

"Hey, let's take a step back here," Ray says, standing between Bob and Frank.

"Someone get me the black case from my van." Bob shouts.

"I said, take a step back," Ray says, louder and more forceful than Frank ever thought he could be. He takes Bob by the arm and yanks hard at him until he is facing Ray, not Frank or Pete. "You gotta explain," Ray says. "Because right now whatever's going on looks pretty alarming."

"It is alarming. This thing looks like Frank, but it's not, it's using him and it's tricking us, and - "

"Hey," Gerard says. "If what you say is true - and I'm not sure it is," he says the last part while looking over at Frank, who is still frozen, too enthralled to panic. Frank tries to make a sound but nothing happens. "What are you going to do?"

"Something I don't have the time to explain."

"No way," Ray says. "You're not doing an exorcism. Not in my house, that's not right with God."

"It's not what you think," Bob says. "And it's not the kind of shit that the church does either, I don't mess with them."

"Um," Mikey says.

"Then what the hell - " Ray protests, but Mikey is louder.

"Um," Mikey says again, louder this time. "Why is Pete glowing?" Mikey says, and Bob whips around and looks, and then Bob moves faster than Frank has ever seen anyone move, opening the bag, pulling out looks like a small silver charm, and pressing it to Pete's throat. The blue glow grows stronger and then Frank starts to choke. He feels like something's against his throat, pushing, pushing against it. He can barely breathe and he can't move and all of the thrall is gone, it's all panic, it's all mortal fear, it's everything going dark around the edges, everyone blurry, and Frank can't tell if it's tears or lack of oxygen but he can barely see Gerard's face even though it's right in front of him, even though Gerard seems to be shaking him, shouting at him, Frank can't feel any of it, only the thing against his throat, only his heart, pounding and pounding and pounding.

"Bob, Jesus Christ, what the fuck," Frank hears as the thing at his throat goes away, as the cold feeling fades and he's able to wiggle his fingers and toes, and then move his arms, but not walk, apparently, because he kind of falls against Gerard, who helps guide him to the ground. Bob is also on the ground, as though his feet gave out from under him, and Frank understands why when he sees that Ray is wrapped around Bob's middle, holding him to the ground like he made for him with a running start. Pete is standing perfectly still with his eyes closed and Mikey is standing in front of him, saying his name, but not touching him.

"Are you ok?" Gerard whispers, looking warily over at Bob, is struggling now with Ray. Ray is refusing to let go of Bob's waist until Bob agrees to stay still for a fucking minute and listen.

"I'm not kidding," Ray says. "Just stay still and I'll let you get up." Bob struggles wordlessly and Ray says, "Fuck, man, seriously, your choice."

"I'm fine," Frank says, though he can still feel the pressure at his throat, and his hands feel weak, like he was holding on to something too tightly for too long.

"Come on," Gerard says, and lifts Frank to his feet, dragging him quickly away from where Bob and Ray are still struggling. "Mikey, get over here," Gerard hisses. Mikey is still standing in front of Pete, just outside of the glow emanating from him.

"You don't understand," Bob says, and struggles against Ray, who, with a heave, knocks Bob back down on the floor.

"I am getting really fucking tired of you saying that to me," Ray says.

"I want to talk to Bob," Pete says, but it's not Pete's voice, not really. Frank hardly knows the guy but he knows he doesn't sound like that, dry and cold and desperate. Everyone stills, and Frank watches as Bob sits up, looks at Ray for a long time, and they seem to negotiate something in their gazes, because Ray lets him up. Bob stands and walks over to Pete, standing at least an arm-length away.

"I'm here," he says, "and I take it I'm not talking to Pete."

"Not Pete," the thing says and it sounds like an echo, like it can only say words it's just heard.

"Pete's gone?" Mikey says. Bob doesn't turn and look at him, keeps his eyes firmly on the not-Pete, waiting for it to answer.

"Suppressed." It says. The blue glow is alternating stronger and weaker, like the sun appearing and disappearing behind clouds.

"So why are you here?" Bob asks. "You've been watching me long enough, you know I don't play games."

"Stuck," the thing says.

"Let me -" Frank says, because the word hits him hard in the chest. He remembers being stuck and it's so vivid, so heartbreakingly like he's right back there that it's all Frank can do not to rush forward and go to the demon or whatever, see if he can help.

"Stay back, Frank," Bob shouts, and Gerard catches Frank's arm and tugs him back down.

"Can't trust a demon," Bob says, and it's both for Frank and for the thing inside Pete and Frank doesn't like the way it sounds at all, like for once Bob is telling the whole truth.

"Stuck!" the thing says with Pete's voice, but the walls start to shake, and several books from a pile of Bob's things on the table tumble and fall open. One makes an unsettling tearing sound though Frank can't see anything broken.

"I think," Bob says, like he's being perfectly reasonable, "that you all should get out of here."

"No," Pete says, and this time it really sounds like Pete. "Don't leave me."

Mikey fairly whimpers. "I'm not kidding around," Bob says, still light with just the edge of emphasis, like someone's taken his last cigarette and he's just negotiating with them for a drag, "I'm sure there are plenty other things to do in the rest of the house.

Gerard doesn't seem to want to move, and neither does Mikey, and Frank's still thinking about the way the thing had said it was stuck, feeling like, as the one of them with the most experience at being mystically trapped, he ought to be able to help.

Ray is hauling Frank up by the shoulder, Gerard, too, and just sort of guiding them with his body language to steer them back, back, until they are out of the kitchen, into the hall, and suddenly filled with the shock of daylight, yellow and not blue, on the porch.

"Stay here," Ray says. Frank feels heavy and so he sits on the stairs, his hands wrapping around a railing.

"What about Mikey?" Gerard says, looking over his shoulder when he sees his brother isn't following.

"Need both my hands to carry him," Ray says, and it should be funny, because Mikey's so tiny Ray probably doesn't even need one hand, but there's something warm in Ray's tone, like he knows why Mikey doesn't want to leave and he knows why he has to. Ray and Gerard share a look and then Ray disappears back inside. Gerard sits next to Frank, exhaling slow like he's been holding his breath, and just leans his head against Frank's shoulder. Frank reaches an arm around behind him and holds him close.

Mikey comes out, pushed out by Ray and his protests are half-hearted because he sounds scared, and Ray is reassuring him that Bob won't hurt Pete, though Frank has a creeping feeling that it's not entirely true. For once, he doesn't mind whatever's happening not involving him.

"Go in my apartment," Ray says. "Seriously, right now, all of you, and don't come back in. Bob said - "

"I don't care what Bob said," Gerard says. "I'm going to - "

"Ray," Bob says, loudly, but evenly. "Ray, could you give me a hand, here?"

Frank starts to hear a whistle, like tea that's boiling in the kettle, but louder, sharper. He lets Ray shove him inside the apartment after Mikey. He feels Gerard's hand on his back and sighs, because it feels cool, and he closes his eyes and leans into Gerard's touch. He can tell when Gerard's attention transfers from Ray to him, can feel Gerard turn toward him like the sun, and he collapses there, on the floor, his hands on Gerard's ankles like he's holding on from a flood.

When Frank manages to get his body to work again, he stumble and runs until he's just a few steps behind Gerard, who is watching his brother run after Pete. Pete, who's walking away, down the sidewalk rubbing his wrists, not looking back at the house, or at Mikey.

"He okay?" Frank asks Bob, who is standing at the door to Gerard's place.

"You mean is the thing gone?" Bob says. "Yeah."

"Where'd it go?" Frank asks.

Bob just looks at him, and then looks away. Frank walks as far as he can to the other side of the porch without seeming too much like he's running away.

  
Gerard watches his brother walk back toward the house, his face blank. Gerard knows the expression of disappointment on his brother's face and he wishes he didn't have to see it, doesn't like the look of it. Mikey smiles at Gerard, a half-smile, all for show, and goes into Ray's apartment.

"Is that - " Gerard asks.

"Let him do whatever he needs," Ray says.

"What happened?" Frank asks.

"Why are you so interested?" Bob says whispers, close to Frank, low enough that Gerard almost doesn't hear.

"I'm not....sure....I can say," Ray says, sounding dazed.

"I got the demon unstuck," Bob says.

"It wasn't a ghost?" Gerard says.

Bob seems to be done with questions, and does the thing Gerard can't stand, that made him nervous about Bob from the very first moment; he shuts down, like there's nothing else there.

"I've got to go to the house where Pete got possessed," Bob says. "I'll be back tonight," and with that he's walking off toward his truck.

"Was Pete ok?" Gerard asks Ray as they both watch Bob drive away.

"He looked....a little like Frank, when he was first...." Ray struggles for the word. "When he came back."

"What was wrong with his wrists?"

Ray's face twists for a moment before he regains his composure. "They got....burned," he says. "From what Bob did to get the demon out."

"Do you feel like he's gotten...colder?" Gerard says and when he sees the hurt on Ray's face, he wishes he could take it back.

"I think it's Frank," Ray says. "I think something about Frank freaks him out, and he just - turns everything else off."

"He said he'd be back tonight," Gerard says, trying to be reassuring.

"I'm going to go clean up your place," Ray says.

"I can do it, you know," Gerard says. "Unless - it's not really gross?"

"No, just some broken windows, and some plaster. I've been meaning to re-do that wall anyway, the plaster was weak."

Gerard looks at Ray for a moment, and then just starts to laugh.

He goes to check on Mikey, who is sitting on the edge of the arm chair in Ray's bedroom.

"Hey," Gerard says, and though Mikey doesn't look up at him, Gerard knows Mikey's acknowledged that he's there. "So did you catch up with Pete?"

Mikey shrugs.

"He was probably pretty freaked. You might need to give him time."

Mikey shrugs again, and then says, "Bob doesn't know how long he was possessed."

It takes a while for Gerard to unpack it, what it means, but when he does, he goes and hugs his brother. "Pete was there the whole time."

"What if he wasn't though? Or what if I was, like, what if it was the demon that liked me?" Mikey looks away, down at his feet.

"Demons aren't all bad, maybe," Gerard says. "Bob, I think, is biased, even if he knows more than we do."

"You're just saying that because your boyfriend's one," Mikey says.

Gerard smiles, though, because Mikey looks less miserable. "You want to sleep here tonight? I'm sure Ray won't mind."

Mikey shrugs. "Was thinking I might go out. Get out of the city, I don't know. Maybe see if I can find Schechter."

"You think you could find him?"

"I remember all the places you guys used to call me to pick you up from."

It knocks the breath out of Gerard and he stutters. "You think he's drinking?"

Mikey doesn't respond for a while, then says, "Why else would he not call us."

"You think it's my fault?"

Mikey suddenly looks tortured. "No, Gee, I didn't mean that, I just meant – come on, you thought it, too."

He hadn't though, he hadn't thought that at all, and he's pretty sure that makes him the worse person.

"Well, if you go, you'd better call me. Everyday. Twice a day."

"I'll call Mom," Mikey says.

Gerard thinks, for the first time in a while, about Elena, and how much he misses her, and how much he wants to talk to her now. It's a wonder, with all the ghosts and things, that he can't just pick up the phone and call her, but he knows if he mentioned it to anyone they might be worried. Except Frank. He thinks he'll tell Frank about it later and Frank will understand.

  
That night, Gerard dreams again of Schechter, sitting in his kitchen. "So?" Schechter says, holding out another cigarette for Gerard.

"So?" Gerard says, and Schechter looks disappointed.

"Have you figured out how you and Pete are the same?"

Gerard just stares at him. "Where did you go? Why won't you call any of us back?

"I'm talking to you right now, aren't I?" Schechter says.

"Is Mikey right, are you drinking? Where are you, we'll come get you, it doesn't matter." Schechter just stares at him, but he doesn't feel guilty the way he thought he would for asking. When Schechter shakes his head no, Gerard actually feels relief.

"How's your drawing been lately?" Schechter asks, quite conversationally and like it isn't a change in the topic.

"Good!" Gerard says. "Really good, actually it feels better than it's ever - " He stops, because Schechter is giving him a look. "You think it's unnatural." He's not sure where the word has come from, why he said that, like it came from somewhere else. "Not everything's about Frank," Gerard says in protest.

"No, you're absolutely right," Schechter says. "Ask Ray if he remembers the first thing he tore apart in the house. And the first thing he fixed."

"What?" Gerard says.

"I said you were talking in your sleep," Frank says, a hand concernedly at Gerard's forehead.

"What was I saying?" Gerard asks.

"It wasn't really words," Frank says, laying back down on his side, his hand on Gerard's chest.

In the morning, Mikey's gone, and Gerard doesn't say anything to anyone about where he's gone, because, even if it seemed like Schechter was ok in his dream, Gerard thinks it's just his subconscious trying to reassure him. He doesn't think anyone's really going to be surprised, and they'll think Mikey went off in search of Pete, or just to be by himself. Ray gives Gerard a shared smile which means that they both know where Mikey's gone and that he's ok. What's more, Mikey will answer his phone when Gerard calls.

Bob still isn't back from the house where Pete got possessed, or if he's been back, neither Frank nor Ray has seen him. For a few moments, while Frank leans against the wall, and plays with the way the curtain's falling, while Ray stretches up to the ceiling with his paint-covered tape measure, Gerard feels normal, the morning feels normal. Until Gerard realizes that Frank's untying the curtain, which seems to have been looped into several knots, and Gerard suddenly thinks of Pete's wrists. And then Ray is pulling out pieces of plaster around a hole in the wall that is absolutely not shaped like the back of someone's head.

"I'm going to - " Gerard says, and gestures upstairs and Frank smiles at him and Gerard almost can't move, and then it's gone, the flash when you're cooking like you're just about to set something on fire.

  
Frank stands over the symbols and looks at them late into the night when Gerard has gone to bed. It's how Frank likes the house; empty like he remembers. It's been so full of people, coming and going, and Frank knows it's all his fault, it's not like Gerard has suddenly opened a hotel. Everyone is coming and going because he's here and it's not right, and now there are symbols under the linoleum of the kitchen which Frank had to have walked over for years. The symbols had to have been here for years, and despite the suspicious look that Bob gave him, Frank's sure that everyone else believes it, too. Still, he can't help feeling like it's his fault, that they're about him. He leans down and touches them and forgets, for a moment before he feels the wood under his hands, that he'll be able to.

The symbols do look old, and like they must have taken someone weeks to carve. They look more like code to Frank than they do like occult symbols or the stuff on a Ouija board. He looks closely at them and then he hears Ray walking around next door and without thinking, Frank goes out the front door, goes over to Ray's door, knocks. Ray peers out the glass for a second, and then lets him in.

"Hi," Frank says.

"Everything ok?" Ray says.

"Yeah, yeah," Frank says, "Just couldn't sleep. I heard you walking around and I thought - "

"Yeah," Ray says, and pulls out two beers from the fridge and hands one to Frank. "I was talking to my cousin. She doesn't really know anything about the house either," Ray says. "But it was damn hard trying to explain what I was asking without telling her about how we have a resurrected ghost who's allergic to holy water and did anyone in the family ever talk about wood work or the Occult?"

Frank laughs and takes several swallows of his beer. "You think it's under your floor?" Frank says and Ray glares at him.

"I do," Ray says, "But we're not talking about it or Bob is going make me tear this up, and I can't be working on two floors at once." Ray smiles wryly.

"At least you talked him down from burning the place," Frank says.

"He does lean toward the dramatic, doesn't he?" Ray says. "Not that I know him well or - " he stutters, flustered.

"Nah, I know what you mean," Frank says. He is captivated by Ray's smile, his flushed cheeks at the mention of Bob, and he takes a sip of his beer, steps almost unconsciously closer.

"Bob's just kind of got this persona," Ray says thoughtfully. "And he's got to keep it up. With what he does, with a bunch of clueless scaredy-cats like us waiting for him to tell us what to do."

"You're not a scaredy-cat," Frank says without thinking. Ray's eyes light up. "You've been pretty awesomely calm through this whole thing. Finding out I wasn't dead, that I was a ghost, the séance. Stopping Bob with the dagger. Trying the holy water yourself." With each thing he lists Frank shuffles a little closer, so that by the end, he's leaning against Ray's side, and that feels better, that feels a lot better.

Ray seems to notice for the first time how close Frank is, and he takes a breath and pulls back, just a little. He doesn't say anything though, which is too bad, Frank was hoping he'd say something. Frank's not really sure what he's hoping at all, everything seems a little foggy, but the clearest thing is Ray and so that's why he keeps getting closer, because things make more sense when he's closer to Ray, when Ray's talking. He doesn't know why he never realized this.

"Is everything ok, Frankie?" Ray asks, and Frank has a flash of Ray inviting him over when he'd locked himself out of his apartment, of Ray smiling kindly at him when he first moved in, of vague memories of knowing Ray since they were kids, of his mother talking about the Toros, of feeling safe because he knew Ray was just next door. Frank reaches up and places his hand on the side of Ray's face, turns him toward him and reaches up and pulls Ray toward him until their mouths meet.

"Uh," Ray says, pulling back, but Frank keeps his hand on the side of Ray's face, turns his body so Ray's leaning down over him with Frank's back against the counter.

"What?" Frank says, because he can't figure out what Ray isn't kissing him back. They're so close and it feels so good, that's all Frank can really think, is the warmth, the feeling filling him, making him feel relaxed and safe.

"Everything ok with you and Gerard?" Ray asks in a tight voice. The word doesn't make sense for a moment.

"Yeah," Frank says, "everything's fine." He tugs at Ray, his fingers moving into Ray's hair. Ray's eyes fall closed for a second and Frank does it again.

"Listen, Frank, I don't think this is - " Ray says but Frank doesn't hear any of it, pulls Ray closer for another kiss and he feels Ray give in, feels Ray's shoulders relax. Frank sighs and feels warmer than he's ever felt, like he's radiating warmth, like Ray is the brightest, warmest thing Frank has ever touched.

"Frank," Ray says, sort of stumbling back.

"I'm sorry," Frank says. Ray looks stricken.

"Maybe you should - maybe we can talk about this - tomorrow," Ray says. He's looking at the floor, not anywhere near Frank.

"Yeah," Frank says, "I'm pretty tired," and when he says it, he feels it.

"Right," Ray says. "Ok, goodnight," he says as Frank goes to the door.

Outside, Frank watches the stars in the sky -tries to figure out what the nighttime smells like, but it doesn't really smell like anything, just warm air and darkness and a little bit like Ray. He feels like he's in a stupor as he stumbles back inside to Gerard's apartment and back up to bed. He doesn't remember falling asleep and in the morning, curled up next to Gerard, he decides it must have been a dream, because there's no reason he would have gone over to Ray's apartment in the middle of the night. There's no way he would have kissed Ray, not randomly like that, not without thinking it through and having some sort of identity issue and not without a reason other than Ray was his friend. It's not like Frank had been secretly holding a torch or anything, and it wasn't like Ray wasn't cute, it was just - it was Ray. Still, Frank feels unsettled all morning until Ray gets there. Frank looks up expectantly when Ray comes in, because Frank figures that Ray's going to say something. And he does, when Gerard gets up to answer the phone.

"You ok, Frank?" Ray asks.

"Yeah," Frank says. "Just didn't sleep well. I didn't do anything last night that - " Frank says.

"No," Ray says, too quickly, Frank thinks, though he's sure Ray's just trying to set him at ease. "No, everything's good."

"Ok," Frank says, because it doesn't really answer his question, but he can't have really done what he dreamed about last night because Ray would say, wouldn't be this calm. He wonders how he's going to manage to ask Bob about what kind of dreams not-quite-human former ghosts are supposed to have.  
Gerard comes back and sits down at the table, offers Ray some coffee and tells them both that it was Bob calling to check in on them.

"You look tired," Gerard says, looking at Frank, reaching out and brushing his hand gently across Frank's face. Frank lets his eyes close for a minute and then answers.

"Yeah, I don't think I slept well."

"Me either," Gerard says. "Weird dreams."

And that's enough for Frank to forget about it.

  
Frank goes out for a smoke, for some quiet, to watch the neighborhood pass by even though he can't really be a part of it. There's someone sitting on the front steps and he thinks it has to be Ray, but Pete's sitting on the very last step of the porch, tossing rocks into the path, the morning still wet with dew that it looks like it just rained all around him while Pete stayed perfectly dry.

"Mikey's out," Frank says, and sits down next to Pete. He's not scared, really, he wasn't ever scared of Pete, but he's not sure he ever actually met him.

"I know," Pete says. Frank notices Pete's wrists are red, the way Frank's had had been when he first got burned. "I came to see you," Pete says, and Frank's eyes fly to Pete's face, who is badly faking a smile. Underneath, he looks wrecked. "I can't really tell anyone what's wrong," Pete says, picking back up another rock and tossing it into the walkway. "I keep saying I was sick."

"You sort of were," Frank says.

"Don't you ever worry that no one's going to think you're normal ever again?"

Frank shrugs. "All that matters is Gerard," he says, and feels weirdly exposed saying it aloud. Pete shrugs like he half-expected the answer. "Mikey would understand. He's a lot like his brother."

"Mikey needs to stay away from me," Pete says. "I'm no good for him." Pete is rubbing the burns on his wrists. "I just wanted to ask," he says, "how you tell when you're better."

Frank doesn't have an answer for Pete, but he knows he had better come up with one fast, because if Pete's staking his whole recovery on the only other paranormally affected person he knows.

"You just feel more like yourself. Not around the edges, so much as….when someone looks at you. You can tell they see you." It's not entirely untrue, and it seems to make Pete relax a little.

"Bob says there's always going to be traces," Pete says. "Like I've got a welcome sign for demons on my back. I need to be careful where I go."

"Is that why you're on the porch here? You can't come in?"

"Nah, this house is fine, I guess. It feels good to be here. Like it's already got its name on me, you know?" Pete says. "I didn't come in because I don't want your boyfriend to punch me."

Frank snorts with laughter, and Pete opens his palms wide, and Frank sees angry red lines there, too, like someone drew in the life lines and wrinkles inside his hands. "Older brothers are scary."

Frank's about to say something about Pete's hands when Ray's door opens. "Frank, are you out there? Can you come help me with the ladder?"

"See you later," Pete says, getting up, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Thanks," he says, and Frank doesn't deserve it, so he waves and watches Pete walk off and then goes into Ray's side of the apartment to help.

  
Frank watches Gerard draw because it soothes him, because he used to for so long, and he can see the change in Gerard when he relaxes, and Frank feels so much like he's the one giving Gerard so much stress that he likes to see something take it away. They're lying on the bed together, Gerard on his stomach with his sketchbook, Frank propped up on his elbow watching. Gerard goes almost seamlessly from inking the sketch of Frank to Frank himself, inching up Frank's shirt and bringing the pen down just above the tattoos on his hips, drawing gently and deliberately around the already existing ink.

"Careful, I'm ticklish," Frank says, though he's holding himself still, his breathing speeding up and his chest rising and falling. Gerard wants to feel it under his hands, so he pushes up Frank's shirt even further and draws up along Frank's ribs, over into the middle of Frank's chest, back down to just at the dip of his rib cage.

Frank shivers, and smiles the expectant smile that makes Gerard's heart speed up. Gerard starts drawing circles with edges touching, then sharp, angled waves, then long lines that go down over Frank's sides, to the sheets of the bed, and Frank shifts and turns himself over, and Gerard scoots up so he's straddling Frank's legs, pushes up the back of Frank's t-shirt and begins filling in the white space, connecting the designs that are already there, smoothing his fingers over the planes of Frank's back and feeling the pull of the pen as the ink starts showing up on Frank's skin.

"Let me see," Frank says, when Gerard pauses, trying to figure out where to draw next, and he squirms under Gerard's weight until Gerard lets him get up, Frank stopping to lean forward and kiss Gerard, kiss his neck, and then abruptly stands and pulls his shirt over his head, looks down at his chest and stills.

"What?" Gerard says, standing, and reaching for Frank's arm to turn him around. Frank's face is stuck in a frown and his eyes are wide with fear when he looks up at Gerard. And then Gerard sees why. All the ink is gone.

"It must have just rubbed off when you turned on your stomach," Gerard says, and goes to look at the sheets, but there's nothing there, not even a smudge of ink. "Huh," he says, and when he looks back up at Frank, he's shaking.

"Where did it go?" Frank says in a small voice, turning around in a half circle as he tries to look at his back. Gerard turns him around and, no, there's nothing on his back either.

"Huh," Gerard says.

"There's nothing there, is there?" Frank says, and he sounds a little hysterical.

"No, but it just - it must have - " Gerard stops, because he's really at a loss.

"Do it again, I want to see - " Frank says, and Gerard is already reaching for the pen. Gerard draws a circle on Frank's chest, almost in the middle. They both watch, Frank's chin titled down so close it's almost on his chest. It's almost as though Gerard blinks and it's gone.  
"Did you see - "

"No, it was just - " They look at each other, and Gerard does it again, as close as he can get to the same spot.

"It's just not - staying?" Gerard says. "Is it something about your body that it just won't - " but then, as they're watching, the ink just seems to absorb into Frank's skin, leaving no trace behind.

"Oh my god," Gerard says. "That's - "

"Don't tell Bob," Frank says urgently, panicked. Gerard feels his chest ache with the sound in Frank's voice. He pulls Frank close, hugs him, and tosses the pen down on the floor.

"It's ok, Frankie, it doesn't mean anything, it's just - " But Frank starts to shake and so Gerard says, "Ok, ok, don't worry, I won't tell Bob, I won't tell anyone."

Frank kisses him hard, so hard Gerard's momentarily can't breathe, and time seems paused there, like it was a choice Gerard could make, one way or the other.

  
Bob does not feel the need to announce himself at his return from his case, or explain at all how it went or what happened, which Gerard is actually kind of grateful for. Gerard's getting quite used to everyone, even Bob, using his apartment like its some sort of headquarters. He wonders if Mikey let Bob in, or whether he's decided he can just come and go without standing on ceremony.

"How are you feeling?" Bob asks, pulling Gerard aside when Frank's gone upstairs for a second. He's looking at Gerard sternly, one hand wandering to rub his forehead , the only sign Gerard's seen that reveals Bob's tired.

"Fine," Gerard says, though he's thinking about how it felt to cough almost until he couldn't breathe, and, without really meaning to, of drawing on Frank, and sex with Frank this morning, and how he'd bitten Frank so hard he drew blood because Frank had just kept asking for it to be harder, more, and how Frank had screamed for it, for him.

Bob looks annoyed for a moment, and then relents. "I'm only asking, because what happened with Pete," Bob says and Gerard's happy to note that Bob's using Pete's name and not talking about the 'thing.' "It should have changed something in the air," Bob says, "made everything that was hard a little easier."

Gerard nods, because something does feel different since Pete, and he's not sure if it's in the air or whether he's just not as perceptive as Bob about those things.

"Thanks," Gerard says. "For checking."

"It's what I'm here for," Bob says. Frank comes in, and Gerard stifles a cough. Bob looks at him, but Gerard makes it seem like he's just clearing his throat until Bob says he's going over to Ray's, and then Frank has to say Gerard's name several times before Gerard can speak again through the coughs to tell him he's ok.

  
Bob thinks he's discovered something in some of his overnight readings of Gerard's side of the apartment, and so he asks Ray and Gerard to go into the basement and take some readings themselves. Ray, who's holding the EMF like it's an egg he's balancing on a spoon, looks decidedly uncomfortable "I don't understand why Bob can't do this, I don't know why he thinks I can read this thing," Ray says.

"He thinks it's something specifically to do with the two of us," Gerard says.

"I don't know, I haven't seen any ghosts," Ray says. "And my side of the house is fine," though the way he's looking around the basement, Gerard's not really sure he believes it. "So what are we supposed to do, just....walk around?"

"You could fix the faucet," Gerard says.

Ray's face lights up. "I'd been meaning to do that, I even have the pieces, they're upstairs, I'll be right back," Ray says, like a man on a home repair mission, and he runs off.

When Gerard turns back to the basement window, Schechter's standing there.  
"Jesus Christ," Gerard says. "Are you haunting me because we have unresolved issues?"

"Who the fuck says you're not the one haunting me?" Schechter says.

Gerard shakes his head. "Can Ray just not see you? Were you here the whole time?"

Schechter doesn't answer. "Why are you doing just what I asked you not to do?"

"Because the sink is leaking, and Bob said - "

"Bob isn't always right." Schechter says, and then, "What do you mean, we have unresolved issues? I got over you years ago."

Gerard is suddenly uncomfortable. "What?" Schechter says. "It's ok that you're the only one who can see me but we can't talk about how we fucked? Just because we were wasted out of minds for most of it doesn't mean I didn't - " Schechter stops, and Gerard thinks there's something he's trying not to say, but then Ray is coming down the stairs, and Schechter's gone.

"Here, I've got the washer and new cold knob," Ray says, coming back down. "Hey, are you ok?" he says, and Gerard realizes he's standing awkwardly, still reeling from what Schechter had left unsaid.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Gerard says. "Just, it's weird down here."

"My side is fine," Ray says again. "I should buy a bunch of air mattresses and have a fucking sleepover."

Mikey comes back with an armful of groceries, which Gerard knows have to be from their mother, and peers down the basement stairs, asking Gerard if he's even going to bother to come up and say hello. Ray uses the excuse to escape his basement ghost hunter duty, leaves the EMF on Gerard's kitchen table and goes out the door, presumably back to the safety of his less weird apartment.

"How's Mom?" Gerard asks. Mikey shrugs, and starts unpacking the bag of groceries, setting two boxes of spaghetti, three cans of tomato soup, and what Gerard thinks is a bag of frozen peas down on the counter. "And you didn't find Schechter?" Mikey shakes his head. "I saw him in the basement again," Gerard says, and Mikey pauses with his hands inside the bag, then pulls out a box of cornflakes and oranges in an orange net bag.

"So you think he never went anywhere," Mikey says. "You really think he's in the house? Why aren't we trying to get him out like we got Frank?"

"Bob doesn't think that's what happened. He doesn't think he's the same thing Frankie was. I'm not even sure he's really here," Gerard adds weakly, and he doesn't have to say to Mikey that it seems like someone else should be able to see him, too, if that were the case. "You'd think he'd say something to you, Mikes, if he was here, find some way, since he knows how worried you are."

"Mom also sent this," Mikey says, handing Gerard something wrapped up in two old dishtowels. Gerard unwraps it, and into his hand tumbles a small brass bell. "She found it when she was cleaning out a couple of old boxes. It's Elena's."

"I remember," Gerard says. "She used to ring it when she dropped something or spilled something. She said it dispelled the bad luck, so it didn't stick to you."

Gerard rings it, and it sounds cheery, small but clear in the kitchen, and it sounds familiar, too, even though he's not sure he can differentiate between bells, but he knows this sound.

"Hope it helps," Gerard says, and rings it again before setting it gently on the table, next to the sugar dish, where Elena had kept it.

  
Frank goes down the stairs on the tips of his toes, trying to be as quiet as possible. It's the middle of the night and everyone, even Mikey, whose sleep schedule has started to very closely mirror Pete's with his midnight adventures, is in bed. Or so Frank thinks. When he's at the bottom of the stairs, he hears someone walking around the living room. It's Bob, who seems to be reading a book by the light of the streetlamp. Bob turns when he hears Frank, who had been just about to head for the kitchen, hoping, somehow, that Bob hadn't heard him. Not that it really mattered, Frank was up and Bob was up. But, still, Frank felt like he was doing something wrong, wandering around his house in the middle of the night, when he should be in bed like everyone else. Like everyone normal.

"Frank," Bob says, and Frank waves in the dark. "Did something wake you?" Bob asks, and like every question Bob asks, Frank can feel the pressure of each possible answer, like Bob's waiting to make conclusions.

Frank shrugs. "I was just awake." Bob nods and closes his book, like he was just as likely to accept Frank saying nothing woke him as he was if Frank said some demon voice was summoning him downstairs." You?"

Bob says, "Haven't gone to sleep yet." There is a can of coke on the table and Frank wonders how many Bob has had, how many M&amp;Ms he's had by the handful in between sips.

"Is it really true that supernatural things are more like to happen at night?" he asks without really meaning to, the way most of his questions for Bob come out, like he is compelled to speak them. Frank thinks it's because Bob usually has all the answers.

"Yeah," Bob says with a laugh. "There's a lot longer answer to that I could give you, but the short answer is, yes, it's more likely they happen at night." He reaches for his coke and takes a sip, and, as though for the first time, Frank notices how Bob swallows, the way his throat moves. Bob's tongue darts out to wet his lips and Frank feels a flush spread over him, heat going up his spine.

He's stepping forward before he knows what he's doing, like he can't stop but he feels like he can't move fast enough. His hands find Bob's arms first, like he's falling, like he's stumbling in the dark even though he can see exactly where Bob is.

"Frank, what - " Bob says and then Frank kisses him. Frank gets a taste of coke and sugar before Bob shoves him away, hard, and Frank goes down hard, his ass against the floor sending a shock all the way through the back of his skull. "What the fuck," Bob says, and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. Frank is so shocked, at his sudden urge to kiss Bob as he is by his hard smack against the floor and so he just sits there for a minute, waiting for the pounding of his heart to stop. "You ok?" Bob says when Frank doesn't say anything. Then Bob sighs loudly, as though he's impatient with the idea of feeling concern for Frank. He holds out his hand for Frank and Frank takes it, hauling himself up. Except that when he's standing again, he doesn't want to let go of Bob's hand.

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure - " he says, but he's stroking his fingers over the back of Bob's hand and that doesn't feel like something he's not sure about. It feels really good, actually, like he's never thought about touching Bob before, usually because Bob was so fast with the knives, and moved around like there was an invisible brick wall around him all the time. Frank feels like he's reached past the wall, somehow. Bob isn't pulling his hand back, and Frank knows he could, from that shove he gave him earlier. Frank looks away from the path his fingers are tracing and up into Bob's face. Bob is looking at him like he just needs a little more information before he does whatever he's going to do next.

"Frank, you're sure you are awake?" Bob asks quietly. Frank doesn't know what kind of question that is, like maybe Bob thinks he's sleepwalking, but Frank is pretty sure he's awake. If he wasn't before, he sure was after being shoved on the floor. What's more, touching Bob like this is like being plugged into a circuit, and Frank feels like he's never been more awake.

He's staring at Bob's mouth and he realizes he should answer Bob's question, so he says, "Yeah, I'm sure I'm awake," just before he leans in and kisses Bob again. Bob lets him this time, doesn't shove him away, and when Frank moves his hands up Bob's arms to grip at his shoulders, Bob does more than just let Frank kiss him, he kisses back, for just a moment, then pulls back.

"Is this a game of chicken?" Bob asks, in the same quiet, contemplative voice that he used to ask if Frank was awake.

"No," says Frank, laughing, because he's feeling warm, almost drunk, and that's the most ridiculous question he's ever heard. But Bob doesn't seem to be too sure about his answer, because he leans in to kiss Frank this time, hesitantly, testing, as though he's waiting for Frank to shove him away. Frank doesn't. Frank grips the back of Bob's neck and holds him close, hangs on, because Bob kissing him like this is like all of the lights in the house turned on at once, everything blazing and bright. Bob kisses him in earnest, his hands sliding down Frank's chest and finding Frank's waist, gripping hard there, harder, until Bob just kind of shoves and lifts at the same time and presses Frank up against the wall, leaning all his weight into him so that Frank should feel suffocated but he only feels like it's not enough, like he needs more.

"More," Frank says, and Bob laughs into his neck, licks there, grabs Frank's face, holding his hands against it, looking intensely into Frank's eyes.

"More?" Bob asks, and Frank nods fervently and then Bob's shoving his hands up underneath Frank's shirt and Frank throws his head back so hard, he knocks it against the wall. Bob sucks on his neck, on his collarbone roughly pulling back Frank's collar like he could care less if the shirt survived. All that Frank can feel is warmth, his head full of light. He feels euphorically happy, like he'd been looking for this forever, for Bob roughly tugging at Frank's hair, Bob grabbing the back of Frank's thigh to lift his leg up around Bob's hips, Bob's hand cupping his ass. It's not difficult for Frank to lift himself up, almost like he's climbing Bob, his legs wrapped around Bob's waist, both of Bob's hands on his ass, fingers spread wide, holding him there. Bob kisses him hard, harder than before, his teeth sharp on Frank's bottom lip and his tongue roughly filling Frank's mouth.

"This is what you want," Bob says, and it's not a question. He rocks forward into Frank and Frank gasps, his eyes squeezed shut and pleads.

"Yes." Because Frank doesn't want anything else in the world but this.

"Ok, fine," Bob says, he eases Frank's legs back down, grabs Frank shoulders and turns him around. Frank thinks they might fuck right there, and he's about to place his palms on the wall, spread his legs when Bob bites the back of his neck and shoves him, not forward against the wall, but out into the hallway.

"Wait -" Frank protests, but then Bob's right there behind him, flush up against his back, whispering in Frank's ear.

"Take me upstairs," Bob says, and then licks Frank's ear and shoves him forward again. Frank really, really likes that, and they move like that up the stairs, Frank first, Bob behind him, like, right behind him, Frank has either Bob's mouth on his neck or his hands splayed across his hips or inside his thighs with every step.

When they reach the top of the stairs, Bob shoves Frank back against the wall, and kisses him so hard Frank's graying out, gasping for breath when Bob pulls away. "Here," Frank says, because they're just the doorway of the bedroom and Frank needs to be naked, needs to be touched, needs the brightness of Bob everywhere around him.

"Here?" Bob says, and slides his hand across the front of Frank's pajama bottoms, cupping his cock.

"Yes," Frank gasps out, arching into Bob's touch.

"In here? In your bedroom?" Bob asks, and there's something in the question, something Frank can't quite understand. All he wants is Bob's hands on him, Bob's mouth on him. Frank nods frantically, thinking yes is the only answer, whatever it is that doesn't quite make sense about the question. "Go in," Bob says, and gives Frank a shove. Frank stumbles clumsily into the bedroom, suddenly desperately cold without Bob's touch. And then he looks at the bed.

There are two figures asleep under the blankets. One of them is Gerard, and that realization, the sharp shock of what he's doing, what he was just about to is enough to make him sick - but Frank can't quite get past the other figure next to Gerard. It's him.

"Frank," Bob says, all passion stripped from his voice. "Go on, go back into your body."

"My - what - " Frank says and then suddenly he's sitting bolt upright in bed, looking at Bob from across the room, Gerard sighing softly in his sleep. Frank's covered in a cold sweat. Bob nods at him, and goes back down the stairs. Frank means to get out and follow him, but he can't quite move, he's still frozen with fear, his mouth bitter with panic.

  
Frank thinks that Bob's going to corner him, drag him off into the basement, behind the door of a locked room, back him somewhere reading something from the grimoire, but Bob pretty much ignores him for the majority of the day. Finally, Frank can't stand waiting any longer and while Gerard is taking a shower, Frank sits down at the kitchen table across from Bob and waits for Bob to look up.

"So are you going to tell me what happened?" Frank says, not meaning to start out so aggressive but tense from all the waiting, embarrassed, looking at Bob, remembering how it felt now, remembering that the dreams he thought he was having clearly weren't really dreams at all.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me," Bob says. He barely looks up from his book.

"I don't know, when it happened before, I thought it was just – "

"This has happened before?" Bob says. His book is closed now, his hands on the table, all his attention on Frank. "With who?"

"With Ray. And Pete. And."

"And?"

"And sometimes things with Gerard are….weird."

"Things. You mean sex."

Frank nods, embarrassed, but he might as well tell Bob because it isn't like Bob doesn't already know too much from last night. "It's like, he forgets things. He does things I don't think he'd usually – I do things and they're not – " Frank stops. Its impossible to talk about.

"You feel like you're taking something from him?"

Frank nods, but that's not quite all. "I feel like I'm – drawing something out, something that's not supposed to be mine."

He feels better saying it, until Bob says, "You are." Frank feels the panic start, like the first time he saw he didn't have a reflection, like this is the moment it's all going to unravel and he has to know this moment was coming. "You know now why Gerard's been sick. Why you two seem so close to the exclusion of everyone. Why you made Schechter disappear into the house."

"I – what?" Frank says, because he can't have – he didn't. But Bob isn't stopping. "But now Gerard's not enough. You know you're taking too much from him, so that's why you're going to other people. Like last night."

Frank feels shamed at the memory. "I didn't know I was - "

"You're dangerous and you can't control it," Bob says, and Frank believes him.

"I didn't mean to make Schechter disappear."

"And you didn't mean to come downstairs and try to fuck me, but you did."

There's a long silence. "So what am I – what am I supposed to do?" Bob seems to have been waiting for Frank to ask.

"Well, there are two ways this could happen. Eventually we're all going to leave, and you're going to be just with Gerard, with nowhere else to pull your energy from. And so you'll just make him sicker. Until his brother comes, and then you'll steal from his brother."

"No,' Frank protests.

"Or maybe you'll just make Mikey disappear into the house, too, and you'll take so much from Gerard that he won't even notice, won't even care."

"No!" Frank says, standing up.

"Or you could find another source. While you're awake, while you have more control."

"How?" Frank says. He's still trying to avoid the horror of the thought of Mikey. About Gerard so sick he can't stop coughing, not even caring.

"Go to a club. Pick someone up."

Frank can feel the disgust on his face. "That's awful."

"But it will work."

"There's – no other way?"

"There's always the dagger," Bob says, lightly. Frank shivers.

"How am I gonna tell Gerard?"

Bob gives him a look. "You're not."

"But that's – "

"You think he'd understand? Even if you told him everything, you think he'd forgive you? He'd forgive you for taking Schechter?"

"If he knew it wasn't my fault – "

"Or are you just assuming you'll be able to make him forget about it, like you've done with everything else?"

"But – "

"Think it over," Bob says. "But don't take too long."

  
"So I think Brian's gone somewhere," Gerard says, and it's not quite what he means to say. He'd seen Frank and Bob talking, in that tense way they always seemed to talk lately, and he'd meant to ask Frank what it was about, and if everything is ok.

Frank turns and looks at him, with that intense focus that makes him relax and makes him forget, almost, what he was trying to say in the first place, like the words didn't matter, like Frank could just tell by looking at him.

Gerard's finding it hard to talk about Schechter, even though it should be pretty easy just to say something to Frank. Frank is the least likely to make fun of him, the most likely to believe him.

"You mean, you think he's just picked up and left? Because something scared him?" Frank asks.

Gerard shakes his head. "I'm not sure I know what scares Brian anymore." Frank just frowns. "I mean, I think he's – he's in the house somewhere, like you were." Gerard shakes his head.

Frank looks stricken. "Bob said something like this would happen," Frank says, though not really to Gerard.

"But it's not like you, nothing happened to Schechter, he just - was here and then he was gone."

"It's my fault," Frank says, like he hadn't heard Gerard at all.

It's not something Gerard can argue with, because Frank looks like he's too far gone into his own sorrow, so Gerard just wraps his arms around Frank and pulls him close. "Shhh," he says. "That's not what's going on. That's not why I'm telling you."

"You were just trying to protect me, I know," Frank says, "But you shouldn't."

Gerard kisses him to convince him he's wrong, and Frank kisses back, and they argue like that, each one trying to convince the other that he's wrong.

Frank pushes Gerard down against the bed, and Gerard arches up against him, and then Frank's scrambling off.

"What," Gerard says, his voice hoarse. "What is it?"

"You were talking," Frank says. "And I just – "

"It's ok, Frank, I wanted to," Gerard says. He pulls Frank down and for a minute Frank doesn't fight, but then he's pulling away again.

"You were trying to tell me something, and now it's like it doesn't matter, and I know that's not what you wanted, but it's what I – "

"Frank, what you talking about?"

"You were just – you were talking about Schechter."

"It can wait," Gerard says, and succeeds in pulling Frank back to him again. "I want this now," Gerard says, and manages to twist them so he's on top of Frank.

Frank falls into it, hoping he'll feel better, hoping he'll be the one to forget as Gerard undoes his pants, as Gerard bites down on his collarbone, as Frank loses himself in the blinding rush of Gerard, but he can't stop thinking of the thing Gerard was trying to tell him, that he made Schechter disappear, that he took this thing away from Gerard and now he's even taking the memory of it away.

He stares at the ceiling for at least an hour, at the shadows playing over it as cars pass on the street, their headlights sweeping through the tree branches, through the curtains, and still seem so far away. Gerard breathes evenly beside him, his face slack, his mouth open. He gets up abruptly, dresses, and goes downstairs, where he knows Bob will be waiting, probably not even asleep.

"It happened again, didn't it?" Bob asks, before Frank even says anything. Bob's marking what could be Morse code on graph paper with an exceedingly sharp pencil. Frank sits in Gerard's armchair, and then, feeling like he doesn't belong there either, slides down onto the floor, folding his legs up underneath him, so he looks like he's comfortable there at least.

Frank doesn't need to say yes to answer Bob's question. "So what do I do?"

"I've got it all planned," Bob says, and it should reassure Frank that someone is taking care of what he can't, cleaning up after his mess, but it just sound ominous. "Tomorrow night," Bob says, and looks pleased, like he's finally gotten his way.

  
The club is warm and loud, exactly the way Frank remembers it. He remembered why it was so easy to get lost here, so easy to feel alive when surrounded by so many people, the loud beat of the music. It feels different now, though; Frank is aware of all of the bodies, all of the energy, everyone moving so freely, so wildly, their eyes closed, losing themselves in the music and the crowd. He can feel every single one of them, and he's turned on, almost painfully sensitive to every touch, every glance his way. He just lets his thoughts drop out of his head and he dances, sways, moves along with the crowd until he's dancing against someone. A cute guy, great bright eyes, and Frank smiles, his expression shy even though he's already practically grinding against the guy. It's the music, it's the thing inside him, and it feels so good Frank has trouble having any sort of restraint. The song changes, the crowd shifts, Frank does it again with someone else. This is much less intense than it was with Gerard - it's like whatever is happening is dispersed over the crowd, and Frank wonders if that's why Bob sent him here, because he knew the effect many people would have on him, instead of all of Frank's frantic search for energy pressing down on one person.

Bob did have it all planned, just as he said, as though he were just waiting for Frank's acquiescence. The truth was, before Frank got sick, he used to go to this club a lot, they had good bands and better dance nights and as soon as Bob started describing the place where he wanted Frank to go, Frank knew what he meant. He was supposed to blend in, and when Frank asked if someone recognized him, what would happen, Bob had only said, "Everything thinks your dead. If anyone does recognize you, they aren't going to come up and say hello. They'll just think it was their mistake." This wasn't much of a sacrifice of his pride, for all he was guilty of. Bob said he'd take care of Gerard. As long as Frank told a convincing story, Gerard would believe him. Frank had been scared by how easy it had been to convince Gerard of anything.

Frank feels someone watching him - it's weird enough in this big room, full of hundreds of faces - but he feels it, and he turns, and sees a kid with dark eyes and a wide smile looking at him. He dances over, somehow moving through the crowd toward Frank. The kid's skinny as a rail, Frank can almost see his ribs through his t-shirt, his hips jutting out against the low rise of his jeans.

"Hi," the kid says, biting on his bottom lip and then leaning in, shouting against Frank's ear, almost pointlessly against the music, "I'm Brendon."

"Frank," he answers, leaning forward to shout in Brendon's ear the same way he had done. Brendon's hands settle on Frank's hips and hold him close, and when Frank pulls back, Brendon is looking at him curiously. "Listen, why did you - " Frank asks, needing to know why Brendon singled him out, how long he'd been watching, what he'd seen. But Brendon doesn't let him finish. He puts his hand on the back of Frank's head and holds him, until their mouths are pressed together. Brendon doesn't wait for an invitation, just starts kissing like he means it, and Frank kisses back, because this is what he's here for, because he can't really stop, because the euphoria's kicking in now, the compulsion to hold onto Brendon, the insane attraction. Brendon's practically crawling up Frank's body, his arms everywhere, tugging at Frank's shoulders, at his back, like he has no control of them, like he can't keep still. They're about to get too dirty even for the middle of the dance floor with the way Brendon's hips are moving and so Frank grabs a handful of Brendon's hair and pulls him back. Brendon gasps, in a way that makes Frank think he kind of liked it, and Frank just shakes his head when Brendon leans back in to kiss him again. Instead, he starts steering them outside.

There are still people around, they're barely hidden against the side of the building when Brendon struggles free of Frank's lead and presses up against him again, stopping their progress. Frank wasn't really sure where he was going, further into the parking lot or to the side of the building or what, but they're not going anywhere right now, not with Brendon's hands on Frank's ass like they are.

"This isn't what - " he came here for, Frank wants to say, except this is exactly what he came here for, someone who didn't look pale as soon as he kissed them, whose grip didn't slacken like Frank was sucking every bit of life from them. But Brendon doesn't even seem to be fading at all, his eyes are just as bright when he pulls back and looks at Frank.

"Not what you wanted?" Brendon says a little breathlessly. "Because I'm pretty much going to be ok with whatever you do want."

Frank wants a lot of things right then, but mostly he just wants to touch Brendon more and so he kisses Brendon again before he says, "I walked here, so if you're waiting for me to take you to my car - "

Brendon pulls a set of keys from his pocket and grins at Frank, and then leans in to lick at the corner of his mouth in a tease of a kiss before running off toward his car. Frank follows.

Brendon unlocks the car, waits with his hand on the door. "In the car, or you want to go back to my place?" The truth is, Frank had only been thinking about the car, about stretching Brendon across the backseat, but the idea of Brendon's place, Brendon stretched across a bed, makes his mouth dry with anticipation. "It's not far," Brendon says, though Frank doesn't need any convincing at this point and he places his hand on the passenger seat door.

"Your place is fine," Frank says, though his voice is unsteady, and Brendon grins at him and leans into kiss him as soon as they're both in the car, then turns the car on with an easy flick of his wrist and navigates the long rows of the parking lot outside the club, taking them out onto the road.

"So, I don't usually - " Frank starts because he feels like he has to say something and he isn't going to ask Brendon what he does for a living. He hopes it might get them on common, awkward ground, but Brendon's response throws him.

"Well, I do," Brendon interrupts, "So, it's ok, you don't have to explain yourself."

"Are you going to let me finish a sentence?" Frank asks, watching Brendon's hands jittery on the wheel.

Brendon laughs. "I don't need to," Brendon says. "I already know what you're going to say."

There's something else there, something Brendon's not saying, something too open about the statement, and Frank thinks he's been spending too much time with Bob because he wants to ask, wants to know who Brendon is, what he means. He doesn't ask, though, because it makes him think of Bob and he doesn't want to be like that, constantly pressing for an answer. Instead, Frank twists in his seat to be able to reach Brendon's shoulder, sliding his fingers up and down to Brendon's elbow, his fingers under the cuff of his t-shirt. Brendon shivers and Frank feels better than he has in ages.

Brendon's apartment is dark, and Brendon doesn't do more than turn on the lamp in the hallway before his mouth is on Frank's and they're kissing like they did the first time in the club, like they've already agreed to something and they'd better hurry up and get on with it.

Brendon gasps when Frank sticks his hands up under his shirt and so Frank just goes all the way with it, tugging the seam up, and Brendon obligingly lifts his arms. Frank's about to take off his own shirt, but Brendon's pressing Frank's hands to his chest, arching up underneath their touch.

"Jesus," Frank says, as he strokes his fingers over Brendon's collarbones, down the taught sides of his chest, and back again over his nipples. Brendon moans and Frank is really, really not sure if they're actually going to make it to Brendon's bedroom or if he's going to have to suck Brendon right here with both of their pants down around their ankles. "Do you want - " he stops, trusting Brendon won't need him to ask.

"Down the hall, on the right," Brendon breathes out. "And don't take your hands off me for a second," he says with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Frank does as he's told. He follows Brendon down the hall, his hand on Brendon's back, the sharp jut of his shoulder blades, the back of his neck, which makes Brendon shiver, and Brendon backs up so his knees are against the bed, his hands at his sides. Frank rubs small circles over Brendon's chest.

"Close the door," Brendon whispers, which is enough for Frank to know that Brendon has a roommate. Frank closes the door and steps back to Brendon, who is still balancing, almost awkwardly, right at the edge of the bed. Frank comes back and settles his hand on Brendon's chest again and Brendon sighs. Then he says, in a quiet, steady voice, "You can push me down on the bed, I know you want to."

The thing is, Frank really does want to shove Brendon down and climb on top of him but he hadn't been thinking it, hadn't considered it until Brendon had said it, and then it was exactly what Frank wanted.

"How - " he asks Brendon.

"The same way you don't need to finish your sentences. The same way I singled you out in the club. I see things," Brendon says and then stops, pressing his lips together to stop from saying more.

Frank shoves him down on the bed then, both hands against his shoulders, and then climbs on top of him before he has a chance to recover, pinning his arms at his sides, straddling Brendon's legs. Brendon's breathing hard and his eyes are wide but he doesn't struggle. Frank's not that much bigger than him and he expects Brendon's made of lots of lean muscle, but this isn't what this is about. This is about Brendon seeing that thing inside Frank, the thing that's draining his energy, and drawing it out.

Frank holds him there, his arms at his sides, Brendon only trying to move up, to press up against Frank. Frank holds him there, waiting, and Brendon makes a noise in the back of his throat, tosses his head to the side like he's trying to hide his face, and then Frank leans down and presses his teeth to the area Brendon's exposed, just under his jaw. Brendon whines.

"Yes," Frank whispers against Brendon's skin, and then he lets Brendon's arms free, busies his hands with removing Brendon's jeans. Brendon wiggles out of them obligingly, sliding his hands up under Frank's shirt, helping Frank take off his own jeans and boxers, and the moment Brendon's fingers slide up Frank's thighs, he's pushing Brendon down again, holding him against the bed with his arms up beside his head, Frank's weight pressing him down. Frank pauses there again, waiting, breathing against Brendon, and this time it's only seconds before Brendon arches up against Frank and Frank is moving against him, his mouth against Brendon's throat, his fingers around Brendon's wrists.

Frank can feel how it's different than just sex, how it's sex and compulsion, skin against skin and a transfer of energy. Frank can feel whatever he's pulling out of Brendon, can feel it pouring into him like warm yellow light, like heat, and at the same time it's almost indistinguishable from Brendon's breath hot against his ear, begging Frank not to stop. He feels Brendon tense, feels him start to shake apart, bringing their hips together faster, harder. Brendon's eyes squeeze shut, his whole body trembling, and when Frank holds his wrists tighter when he tries to move, Brendon cries out, coming against Frank's stomach. It doesn't take Frank more than a few frantic, rhythmless thrusts after that until he's coming, too, hot and messy and helplessly, mouthing Brendon's jaw and the corner of his mouth until Brendon kisses back, both of them still gasping for breath.

"Wow," Frank says, rolling off Brendon, not really able to move much more. Brendon is calm beside him, gets up languidly after he catches his breath, returns with a towel, which he uses to wipe them both off. He then lies back down next to Frank, looking still and sated with an expression of quiet content. "Are you sure you feel - " Frank starts to ask, because he remembers how he is, what he does to people.

"I'm perfect," Brendon says, even and slow.

Brendon isn't asleep but he doesn't seem to be moving, and so Frank gets up and starts to get dressed. "I should - " he says, and when Brendon doesn't finish, he leans over to check to make sure he's ok. "I should go," he says, leaning close over Brendon, who bites his lip and smiles.

"Ok," Brendon says, and then, "Wait, I'll drive you home."

It seems to take Brendon some effort to get up, but he does, getting dressed slowly, rubbing his eyes, like he's been in a deep sleep for hours. He doesn't speak on the way to the car, only asking, quietly, "Which way?"

Frank laughs. "You can't see where I live?"

Brendon shakes his head, and pulls out into the road in the way Frank points. "Not now, at least," he adds, but nothing more, and Frank can't tell if he's joking. Frank directs him the rest of the way to his apartment, neither of them saying anything else but it doesn't feel strange, even though Frank keeps expecting it to, even though Frank can feel the buzz of energy gone from Brendon, the jittery intensity faded, but Brendon still seems fine, not about to pass out or anything.

"Here," Frank says, gesturing to his place. Gerard's place. Ray's.

"What a gorgeous house," Brendon says. Frank tries not to say anything in response about how things aren't always they appear. "Thanks," Brendon says, leaning over the parking break to kiss Frank soundly.

"Yeah," Frank says, feeling a little stupidly euphoric after the kiss, stumbling out of the car and up the front steps, watching Brendon drive away.

  
Gerard sits with his sketchpad in his armchair, half-dozing, waiting up for Frank. Bob checks on him twice, as though he's worried about how Gerard's doing without Frank around for what might be the first time in months.

"You're late," Schechter says, and startles Gerard.

Gerard blinks and rubs his eyes. He's still in the living room, but Schechter's here and so it means it mustn't really be the living room at all.

"I was waiting up for Frank," Gerard says.

"Have you figured it out?" Schechter asks impatiently.

Gerard watches the door, as though Frank could walk in at any moment, even though Gerard knows for some reason that Frank is far away. "You know I always hated how you expected me to be the one to figure things out for you," Gerard says, without really meaning to. Schechter looks stricken for a moment, and then pleased.

"You got clean first," Schechter says. "Of course I thought you knew everything."

"We would have never worked out," Gerard says, though it's at the moment that Schechter's hands find his shoulders and so it feels a little untrue.

"Of course I thought you knew everything," Schechter says again, leaning closer. "Don't close your eyes," Schechter says, and then he leans forward and kisses Gerard. It's weird, weirdly intense, because they're looking at each other, eyes almost too close, and the moment Gerard really feels it, feels Schechter's teeth against his bottom lip, the bolt of pleasure, of need, his eyes fall closed and Schechter pulls away.

"I hope that was enough," Schechter says.

"It wasn't," Gerard says, reaching out, but then he hears a car door close and realizes he's fallen asleep. Gerard hears the door, hears Mikey come rushing down the steps, hears Bob's kitchen chair scrape back against the floor, and realizes Frank must be back. He feels sleepy, his limbs heavy, and so he decides to wait for Frank to come over. Bob had said Frank might be tired, that it was a trip that would drain a lot of his energy, and so Gerard would rather not push, since this was the first time Frank had actually left the house and Gerard wanted it all to be normal. He doesn't know the moment he falls back asleep, but it's before he figures out why Frank got dropped off by someone in a car.

  
Frank can still feel Brendon's energy inside him when he steps into the house, but thinking about it makes him feel greedy rather than sated, and he digs his fingers into his palms and closes his eyes to steady himself. When he opens them, Mikey is sitting on the steps, looking at him.

"You ok?" Mikey says, meeting Frank on the porch, his car keys in his hands, clearly just on his way out. "Where'd Bob send you?"

Frank shakes his head, brushing off the question, not really wanting to answer one way or the other. "Is Gerard asleep?"

Mikey cocks his head toward the living room, where Gerard sprawled across his favorite, ugly chair. "He was waiting for you," Mikey says, and Frank's heart clenches.

"Ok," he says. "I'll let him know I'm back."

Mikey disappears into the dark, and Frank goes inside over to Gerard, leaning down over him, pressing his forehead to Gerard's, trying to get close without taking anything from him.

Gerard wakes with a sharp inhale, but then relaxes and smiles. "Frankie," he says sleepily. "You're back. Where'd you go?"

"Nowhere important," Frank says and that somehow seems to be enough for Gerard. "I've got to go talk to Bob, but - " he says, nuzzling Gerard's temple, trying desperately not to kiss him. "You should go to bed."

"Ok," Gerard says, and sighs when Frank's lips touch his cheek.

"Go," Frank says, but Gerard leans forward and kisses him, and Frank feels the world become bright and clear, tangling his fingers in Gerard's hair. "Gee," Frank murmurs, and Gerard pulls back and nods, shuffling sleepily up the stairs. Frank tries to convince himself that Gerard only looked sleepy, not sunken, but he can't help but feel the tingle in his lips means he took something from Gerard, even though he should have needed to take nothing more, not after everything he took from Brendon.

Bob is waiting in the kitchen, reading a book by candlelight.

"That shit's bad for your eyes," Frank says. Bob closes the book and examines him.

"So?" Bob says. Frank pours a glass of water from the faucet and sits down at the table. "Did it work?"

Frank hates the way Bob makes it seem like it's some errand he's been on, though he's not sure he really likes the alterative either. "So I met someone. And we went back to his place." The words sound foreign and not real, like it's a lie. Bob nods for him to continue. "And it felt - " Frank can't find the right word. Amazing and wracked with guilt.

"And how was he? When you left?"

"Fine," Frank says. He might as well tell Bob the whole truth. "He seemed....better, after."

"People usually are after a good fuck," Bob says.

"That's not - " Frank stops, feeling the guilt almost make him sick. "It wasn't like with Gerard. The kid seemed...normal, afterward. More normal than when we met."

"What was his name?" Bob says with feigned nonchalance.

"Brendon," Frank says and then he understands. "Oh my god, you know he was going to be there. That's - You know who he is, don't you? And he's some kind of demon thing, too, isn't he? You are such a fucking liar. Is this a game for you? Some insane demon matchmaking bullshit?"

"Just tying up loose ends," Bob says quietly.

"So you know him," Frank says. "You knew if I went there that he'd be there."

"Why does that bother you?"

"Because you're messing with my life!" Frank says.

"What life?" Bob says quietly, and Frank is pretty sure nothing would feel better in this moment than to punch Bob.

"What is he?" Frank asks.

Bob shrugs. "He's like you, I guess. Some creature who isn't quite right, who uses other people to exist."

Frank takes a step back. Bob's disdain for Frank, and Brendon, is clear. Frank thinks of the silver dagger, wonders where it is.

"I can't do this," Frank says. "I trusted you to make this better and – "

"And I did," Bob says. "Or are you saying it didn't feel good?"

Frank clenches his fists. "That's not – that's not what this is supposed to - I just don't want to make Gerard sick anymore."

"Then you'll go see Brendon again."

Frank stares at Bob and finally says, "There has to be another way."

Bob stands up. "There is. It's called a silver dagger."

For a moment, Frank actually considers it. It's just like when he first came back – wrong – how the idea that he could hurt someone was worse than his desire to live, and he'd been trapped for so long, it didn't really matter, it's not like he was ever going to get his life back. He actually surprises himself by backing out of the room. "I can't – " Frank says, and he's not sure which thing he means, living for dying.

"You will go see Brendon again if you don't want to kill Gerard," Bob says. "Or anyone else. It's a perfect exchange."

Frank suddenly feels exhausted. "I'm going upstairs," he says, and pours the rest of his water down the sink.

"See you in the morning, sunshine," Bob says, with a big, fake grin.

Frank walks up the stairs without looking, still thinking of the shine of the silver dagger, the feel of Brendon underneath him, Brendon's wrists under his hand, and he's practically running into Gerard before he realizes he's there. "I – " Frank says, and then it hits him that Gerard isn't coming down the stairs, he clearly never went all the way. He was listening, and it's written all over his face.

"What did you do?" Gerard says. He sounds scary, like Frank's someone he doesn't know, which, Frank thinks, might actually be true. "What did Bob make you do?"

Frank can't speak. He can't form the words, can't make the rationalization mean anything. He just looks at Gerard and says, "I'm sorry," which at least isn't a lie.

"Did you sleep with this guy, Brendon?" Gerard asks, and Frank shouldn't be surprised that he's put all the pieces together.

Frank says, his voice rough, "Yeah."

Gerard looks like he breaks a little bit. "I told you, you can – "

"But it hurts you!" Frank shouts. "I know you told me, but I can't take that from you. I'd rather – "

"You'd rather sleep with a stranger?"

Frank knows Gerard is right. He knows. "I need to talk to Bob," Gerard says, pushing past Frank, and Frank goes upstairs and then just sits there on the steps, like he doesn't have the energy to go further. He doesn't want to hear the fight Gerard's going to have with Bob, but he also knows he should be there, should be in the middle of it. He just feels like all the fight's gone out of him.

He can't really make out the words, only that Bob is shouting as much as Gerard is, until they come around the corner, and then it's too loud, too clear, and Frank can feel the anger like waves coming off Gerard, worse than when Pete was here, clearer, more naturally from him.

"I didn't do anything that Frank didn't want me to do," Bob says.

"You've spent all this time telling him he's a monster, of course he's going to do whatever you tell him to do. You've made him feel like he's not even human."

"He isn't," Bob says plainly. "I did this to keep you safe," he says to Gerard.

"I want you out of my house," Gerard says, and he reaches behind Bob and just pulls open the door. The night air floods in, and Frank remembers the air rushing past his face in Brendon's car, the first time he saw the sky after he'd come back to his body. He thinks he can see the sparkle of stars over Gerard's head, and he stands and walks back down the stairs.

"Fine," Bob says. He looks up at Frank. "You know I'm right," he says to Frank. "You've only got two choices."

"I said get out!" Gerard screams, loudly enough that Bob takes a step back and then Ray's door opens.

"Everything ok?" Ray asks, appearing just outside the door, as though waiting to be asked in.

"I'm going in the kitchen," Gerard says. "I want you gone when I come back out," Gerard says to Bob, who has already started to gather an armful of stuff.

"No, seriously, what's going on?" Ray asks.

"It's no big deal," Bob says, though he's not looking at Ray. Ray looks at Frank, who doesn't know how to explain.

"I should go check on Gerard," Frank says, and heads off into the kitchen.

Gerard won't look at him. He's doing the dishes, the water running filling the kitchen with soft sound, though Gerard is still shaking his head like he has water in his ears.

"I'm sorry," Frank says. "I thought it would make it better."

"Make what better?" Gerard says. Gerard is looking at Frank like the answer is obvious, like the solution has always been right in front of him, but Frank doesn't know how to tell him why he can't.

"It's like," Frank says and then stops. "It's like you're an ice cube, and you're in a glass and you're melting." Gerard makes a face at him but Frank keeps going. "And I'm thirsty, I'm so thirsty, and so I keep taking sips of the water from the glass, I can't help it."

"I don't mind," Gerard says. "I'm ok,"

"But you're not," Frank says. "You're – you're melting and you're going to be just water and then I'm going to drink you all and you'll be all gone."

Gerard gives him a ridiculously tender smile that he doesn't deserve. He takes a few steps forward, and Gerard meets him, taking Frank's face in his wet hands, soapy water trailing down Frank's jaw. He feels so warm, the rush of energy, and he just leans into Gerard's kiss, letting go, feeling it. Gerard's fingers tangle in his hair and Frank can count Gerard's heartbeats, can feel his pulse, can feel what he's taking from Gerard like a thin strand straight from his heart, tugging and tugging.

Gerard starts to cough, and Frank jumps back, Gerard's coughing fit so strong he almost doubles over. Ray comes rushing into the room.

"You ok?" Ray asks Gerard, and then before he can answer, to Frank, "What happened."

"I'm fine," Gerard says, around a cough. "I'm fine."

"It's my fault," Frank says.

Gerard wipes his hand across his mouth, and then he frowns when he looks up at Ray. "Is he gone?"

"He said he just had a few more things," Ray says. "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

"I don't want Bob involved anymore," Gerard says. Frank watches Ray, who looks visibly torn between trying to get a better explanation out of Gerard and going to see Bob, and Frank sees the moment Ray makes a decision.

Ray is already half out of the room when he shouts over his shoulder "I'm going to see if I can catch him," and then it's just Frank and Gerard, alone for the first time in what feels like forever.

"You can't listen to Bob," Gerard says, "You can't, Frankie." Gerard reaches out a hand for him, but Frank takes a step back. Gerard looks crushed.

"I can't take that from you," Frank says. "I can't stand how it hurts you."

"It hurts me more to think – " Gerard says and then stops, but Frank knows what he's not saying. "I can't live with the idea that you're out there, fucking random people."

Frank stops. That's exactly what he did. It sounds more wretched than he could imagine. "I thought – Bob said – " There's nothing Frank can say that will make it any less sick. He fucked a random guy, someone paranormal like him, and he lied to Gerard about it.

"Why did you trust Bob more than me?" Gerard says. He looks heartbroken.

"I didn't trust Bob," Frank says, and Gerard's mouth tightens. Frank doesn't trust Bob, but after what happened with Brendon, he's not sure that Bob wasn't right about what he was telling Frank, whether he was messing with him or not. Brendon made Frank feel better, and Frank seemed to do something for Brendon in return, and Frank isn't entirely sure that he can explain that to Gerard without making himself sound like a total asshole. He's not sure that that isn't the case.

"Listen, I need to think about this," Gerard says, and they're not the words Frank wants to hear. They sound too much like goodbye. "I'll go stay with Mikey tonight," Gerard says. "I don't want to leave you alone in the house, but I'm just- confused," he says, though the look on his face is more like pain.

Frank just nods. Gerard touches his arm, and Frank looks down at where they're touching, and closes his eyes. "Ok," he says, and Gerard grabs his keys and goes out the door.

  
Frank is still looking at the door, still stuck in the moment of Gerard leaving, waiting as though he is still a ghost again and this was the door he couldn't use. He plays the moment back in his mind, Gerard turning back to look over his shoulder, with a little smile that looked so sad. And then he just hadn't come back.

There's an urgent knock on the door and Frank runs forward, his hand on the knob. He swings the door open, and he's expecting Gerard so much that it takes him a moment of open-mouthed staring to realize it's not Gerard standing in front of him. It's Brendon. He looks nervous. Or, not quite that, shifting restlessly on the porch like he's standing on ice and keeps sliding back and forth.

"I know it's not a good time," he says before Frank can get a word out. "I mean, I *know*."

"Yeah, this is – "

"But I need you to tie me up."

Frank stops whatever protest he was going to make. He's wondering where he can get ropes, wondering if he ought to call Bob back for this, because if Brendon's got something inside of him that needs to be tied up so desperately, Frank's not sure he's going to be able to handle it on his own.

"How dangerous are you, man, because all I've probably got is twine, and Bob's not here. Why didn't you – "

Frank stops because Brendon is giving him a look that means Frank's got it all wrong.

"I need you to tie me up," Brendon says, and then Brendon rushes forward, grabs Frank's hand and guides it to the back of his head, and Frank pulls him in.

"Oh," Frank says, his heart beating faster, the feeling, the rush already building.

"Yeah?" Brendon says, looking better already, his eyes closed as he leaned into Frank's touch.

"Yeah," Frank says, pulls Brendon all the way inside, and closes the door. When he kisses Brendon, the rush is so strong, he almost forgets Gerard's name.

  
Gerard is not, as it turns out, on the porch when he steps out the door and closes it behind him. He's not outside at all, but in the basement.

"What the fuck," he says.

"I can't say I'm not glad to see you," Schechter says, "But this wasn't how it was supposed to happen."

"You're telling me," Bob says, from behind him.

"I thought I told you to leave," Gerard says to Bob.

"I did. I went right through the door and ended up here."

Gerard looks to Schechter, who nods in confirmation. "Can you see him?" he asks Bob, and Bob looks at Schechter, and then back at Gerard.

"Yeah, I can."

"So does that mean that I'm - that we're - " Gerard stops.

"Dead?" Schechter says. "I don't have a good answer." Schechter offers him a cigarette. "We can still smoke though, which is something. I'm not sure if its really smoking, but it feels like it."

"Fuck smoking," Gerard says and runs up the stairs.

"Don't do that!" Schechter says, running after him. "I swear to God, Gerard, I'm telling you, don't go up there."

Gerard seems to go through the door rather than actually opening it, and he'd be more freaked out by it if he wasn't distracted by what was happening when he gets upstairs. He knows now why Schechter didn't want him to come up.

Frank has a kid pressed up against the wall in the hallway, his hands up under his shirt, their mouths moving together messily. "Is that Brendon?" Gerard asks Bob.

"Yeah," Bob says quietly.

"Oh, Frankie," Gerard says, though he knows Frank won't be able to hear him, and then Schechter's hands are on him, turning him away, pulling him into a rough hug.

"Don't look," Schechter says. "Come on, don't look."

Gerard closes his eyes, tight, presses his face into Schechter's shoulder until he sees only stars.


End file.
